Fade To Black
by Reichenbach
Summary: Something has fallen from the Void to Rose's universe and the Doctor does something rather underhanded in order to be able to do something about it. Captain Jack appears. Doomsday fixer upper 9th in the Doors series
1. Chapter 1

Standard Disclaimers Apply. Thanks to krypto for the beta. I'm never good at titles.

XYZ

Fade To Black

Chapter 1

XYZ

Greg set the enormous red duffel bag next to the TARDIS doors, taking a look around the control room. He'd miss this place. It had been an awesome time in his life—nothing could ever compare. But his time was up. He had to get back to the real world.

The Doctor was engrossed in something on the control column, and he could have probably walked out of the room without giving any notice, but he was suddenly feeling nostalgia-y. Which wasn't a word.

The occupants of this ship had rubbed off on him in a lot of ways, he supposed.

Coming around the console, he rubbed his clammy hands on his jeans. "Well, I guess this is it." He held out a hand.

The Doctor looked at it, like he wasn't quite sure what to do. Oh, well that was damned awkward. "I guess so. Last night on the TARDIS. Back to 'the real world' and all that." He didn't seem angry—reticent perhaps. "Already packed. You're going to make a mad dash for the door in the morning, aren't you?"

Greg felt his cheeks grow warm. "No, sir. I just…" Now his ears were burning. He scratched the back of his head, running his hands through the hair that had grown shaggy in the last few months. "I just… I get a bad feeling. Like if I don't, I never will."

Going back to what he was doing, the Doctor began unscrewing something from the console. "Yeah. I know."

Was there some kind of word for something even more awkward than awkward?

He stood there for a moment, watching the Doctor twisting the screw the rest of the way out with just his fingers. "Just…let her down easy."

Looking away, Greg felt something twist in his stomach. "That's why I, you know. With the bag."

A distant look came over the Doctor as he stared up into the rafters for a moment, one side of his face pulled back in an uneven smile. "I said let her down easy. Not flee for your life."

The young man unbuttoned the top of his polo shirt—it was suddenly very warm. He gave an uneasy chuckle. "So avoiding her until we reach home isn't the thing?" Of course he knew it wasn't, but he'd been trying. A lot. Ever since this afternoon's…fiasco. "I just…don't get why she's so upset."

He hadn't sent her mixed signals, had he? She was sixteen and a young looking sixteen at that, he was nineteen and thought of her more as the little sister he'd been denied by fate by being the youngest of seven children. Oh yeah, and the Doctor had made it clear on day .5 of his journey that if he looked at Violet like that, he'd find himself inside an erupting volcano…or worse.

Twisting the screw around in his fingers for want of anything better to do, the Doctor sighed. "She…hasn't had many friends. Maybe she thought if she dragged everything out, and you missed the deadline you set for yourself…you'd stay."

Greg blinked rapidly, trying to digest that. "So getting us killed by a Minotaur in the middle of a labyrinth was just an elaborate ploy to keep me around? That's the worst plan I've ever heard." But it did explain some things. He'd thought, at first, that maybe Violet was just letting him trying to figure out what was sure to be his last great escape, though he suspected she knew how to get out of the maze the entire time.

She'd seemed regretful when they ended up in the Minotaur's lair, and HAD at least kept him from being torn to pieces, but still—that was about three hours of his life he'd never get back. In fact, he'd probably still be down there if the Doctor hadn't found them. It would also explain the exceptionally annoyed look he'd shot the girl.

The Doctor shrugged, still not looking directly at him. "She's sixteen. She's female. She doesn't need to make sense."

Sighing in defeat, Greg's shoulders slumped a bit. "I'll go talk to her." He was nineteen, it was his obligation to be the bigger party. That's one thing that he'd learned in this last year with the Doctor and Violet; responsibility for taking the high road fell upon those who knew better.

"Good lad," the Doctor encouraged, turning back to whatever tinkering (Greg suspected it was just something useless to keep his hands busy) he'd been up to. He sighed, looking up again then muttered, "been a long time since I've traveled alone."

What was that supposed to mean?

She was in the kitchen with a cup of tea when he found her—he didn't have to look hard. It's where she always was at nine in the evening. For a bunch of people bent on doing something new every day, they certainly did have their routines.

He saw her legs were propped up on the chair across from her, so he pulled out the chair to her right, sitting down. "Hey."

Staring straight ahead, she continued swishing the tea around in the cup, as if it had some sort of secrets to tell her. "Hey."

The girl was not going to make this easy, was she? The Doctor was right—females had their own set of logic and rules, and never came with a manual. "Vi, I have to go. When you two invited me… I told you. One year. Three hundred and sixty-five days. Eight thousand, seven hundred and sixty hours. That was it."

"That's fine," she answered dully, still not breaking her concentration from the cup.

That had gone so well! Getting up, he pushed the chair back in. "I'm going to bed. My move-in time at the residence hall is 8 am." By all accounts, he'd only be gone a few weeks, off backpacking with friends (or so his mother believed). It was sometimes hard to think that he had a normal life to get back to, but he knew he had to do it. Otherwise he'd never go home.

He was from a large (slightly clingy and moderately codependent) Indian family, and that sort of thing just wasn't done. So he'd given himself one year to have the most fantastic time of his life before he went to university, which his father had played for with 'blood sweat and tears' or at least a job he wasn't all that fond of, but had sent all of his older brothers and sisters to school with. Basically, he was going back out of duty.

Which wasn't so bad—really. It could be worse. Other than being neurotic and in each other's business constantly, his family could have been a lot worse of a group of people to have duties to.

Of course, he was going to a school where a full 70 of the students had their own rooms and bathrooms, and his dad had declared he was only paying for the cheapest housing accommodations. Which meant living with whoever knew how many creepy freshmen. He kept having these prison movie nightmares involving the common bathroom and slippery bars of soap.

"Good night, Violet."

She continued staring deeply into her tea with those terribly round dark-brown eyes, a frown tugging down on full lips and round cheeks. Everyone was avoiding him tonight.

Defeated, he walked to the door, ready for his last night in his room in the TARDIS. It was already cleared out—the walls were bare and voices echoed off of them; it was already a foreign space. "Come and visit me, or something."

Walking back to his room, he thought about that. They had a time and space machine. It wasn't like she couldn't stop in whenever she felt like it. But he knew it wasn't the same. She wanted him to stay. She wanted things to remain the way they were.

The Doctor had said in that regard, she was very much like the others of their kind had been: entirely resistant to change. Well, that's life, his father would say. Get used to it.

He never made it back to his room; a few feet from the door, Violet called his name. And like the idiot he was, he went back into the kitchen, sure this was going to turn into a knock-down, drag-out type row. They'd had plenty of those in the last year. He could almost smell them coming on the wind now days.

But when he got in there, all he saw was a second cup of tea on the table. "Cuppa?" she asked, something tentative and apologetic in her voice.

Greg sat down, figuring he had even odds of getting bashed over the back of the head with a half-full kettle and dragged into a storage room and locked up until move-in was over. If that happened, he'd be seriously…SERIOUSLY unhappy, and Violet was going to get more than just the Doctor's usual 'did you really have to do that' unhappy look. "So," he began, waiting for her to play her hand.

XYZ

Despite the lack of second (or third) bodies in the bed, it was terribly warm under the blankets and down duvet. The act of sticking his hand out of the covers to shut off the alarm wasn't a prospect Jack Harkness was looking forward to. Even if the alarm was incredibly annoying.

Of course that was the whole point in an alarm—something so hideous and screeching you HAD to get up, if only to make it stop stabbing your brain.

Maybe he could just do it very quickly. Quick thrust out, shut it off, hand back in before any damage is done.

But it never works like that. Soon as his hand hit the 'off' button, he groaned. The damage was done. He was awake and the magical spell was broken. Might as well do it. Might as well face the day.

The problem with getting in the shower, then, was that it was hot, and it made him want to stay in it forever. Or until the water ran warm then cold. The first would be preferable, but the second would be the more likely conclusion. He could just put his head up against the tile and…

There was a beep from his wrist computer in the other room. It was a particularly annoying beep, something akin to the alarm clock, this way he'd never mistake it for anything else. It had not gone off since the alert had been set, but there was no question what that sound had been.

Rushing through the morning routine as quickly as possible, he hobbled out of the bathroom after slamming his toe into the sink and nearly tripping over his towel as he attempted to dry himself off and make for the wrist computer on his bed. Too many actions at once landed him half on the mattress and half off as he dove for it, pressing the message button.

There it was, plain as day, the nose on his face…something. Between two dormitories on a local university campus. It sat there all smug and arrogant and so very, very blue: the TARDIS.

XYZ

The pressing need to get rid of all the tea he'd consumed the night before was what woke Greg. Peeling his head off of the wooden table, he turned his head front and center, causing the muscles to spasm. Next to him, Violet was asleep with her forehead on the edge of the table, empty cup still clutched in her hand.

As he went through the painful act of getting to his feet, he looked at his watch, which read seven-thirty, and tried to contemplate how much sleep he'd gotten. At three, he'd complained that she wasn't helping him get to bed. At three-thirty, he'd given up looking at his watch as he began regaling her with the tale of his sister's 'other' wedding. You know, the one that his parents actually knew about.

She'd been howling, absolutely delighted at the utter chaos that had unfolded that day, especially when the subject of the marriage license came up, and all the veins that were pulsing on his father's head.

For some reason, the more insane and dysfunctional the family story, the better she liked it. These things, she told him, made good future psychologists and even better stand-up comics. He retorted that these things weren't nearly as funny at the time, and he doubted his mum would allow him to discuss the family's 'dirty laundry' with other human beings, much less a crowded club. It didn't seem worth the bother to say it was good thing she wasn't human; for some reason it was a VERY touchy subject. It didn't bother HIM that she wasn't human, so he didn't know why she was all up in arms about it. At this point in his young life, girls were much more foreign to him than aliens.

Finishing up in the bathroom, he rubbed his chin. It wasn't much in the way of stubble, but it was more than he'd ever be able to manage in a twenty-four hour period a year ago. He wondered if his mum would notice, when he went home for the holiday break. It could be easily discounted—that'd be a whole two and a half months away. So much could change in three months, he'd tell her.

Or a year. It was hard to think that once he stepped outside those doors, he'd have to reset his watch to the "local" time for the last time, remember that he was eighteen years old, even though a birthday had passed in the TARDIS, and that normal life lay ahead.

He'd get over it.

What choice did he have, really? Violet didn't know how lucky she was—she'd go one forever like this—almost literally. She was always harping about 'normal,' and the wonders of his 'normal' life with his 'normal' (read: completely nutters) family.

And perhaps he could appreciate her situation. She'd certainly started out with something fairly normal, at least as far as humans were concerned. Being one of the last of your kind had to be tough. It was probably a natural refuge for the girl, hiding behind memories of a very comforting former life.

Patting the wall as he left the bathroom, he smiled. He'd miss the ship and all of her many sounds. All the other freshmen, he supposed, would be trying to learn how to sleep without the sounds of home. Greg knew he'd be learning how to sleep without the sound of the TARDIS groaning through time and space.

As it was, she was just making quiet little ship hums. They'd arrived while he'd been asleep, it seemed. Hopefully in the right time, day, year and place. The ship had been spot on the last several trips, but leave it to now for her to decide to throw them into one last adventure. The thing was, if it came to that, he'd lose his resolve and stay.

XYZ

Continuing his fairly useless repairs, the Doctor worked to the sounds of hyperactive teenagers well into the night. Violet and Greg had been laughing in the kitchen for hours; the sounds of their animated conversation echoing down the halls of the ship and filtering their way into the control room. That was the way it should be. A pleasant last night. Well, for whom, it remained to be seen.

He wasn't looking forward to this. The fact that it had been Rose's suggestion didn't help. The Doctor'd done this before, and it hadn't bothered him, but now it did. Well, everything had already been set into motion, so what was done was done, and he'd have to live with the consequences.

Well, part of it had been Rose's idea. But the whole way of dealing with this…that was entirely bearing HIS signature.

A few minutes after he heard Greg making his morning toilet, Violet stirred in the kitchen. A minute or so after that, she came dashing into the control room. "Did he leave yet?" Practically falling over the control column, she breathed a sigh of relief, seeing the enormous bag near the door.

He folded his arms over his chest. "No. It's getting to be almost eight, local. So he'd better, if he's going to NOT end up with the top bunk." The Doctor shuddered. He'd fallen out of a bunk bed at the academy and bashed his head on his desk so hard he almost regenerated, right then and there. And that would have just been embarrassing. "I also have another box of stuff he can take—you might have to help him carry it though. I think he packed an entire dorm room into the duffel bag."

The Doctor kicked a large wooden crate towards her. "You're not seein' him off?"

Shrugging, he leaned against the railing casually. "I've spent too much time…well, in this time. Running into myself—or worse—someone who knows me… not worth cleaning up the paradoxical shards of too quickly cooled Pyrex, as it were. Besides—it's Cardiff. Something bad'll happen." It wasn't paranoia if something bad really DID happen every time you came to Cardiff, he justified.

Greg came into the control room a minute later, wearing a freshly-changed polo shirt and carrying the last few of his items. "Well, sir. It's been great…" Holding out a hand, he was surprised when the Doctor actually shook it.

Leaning in, the Doctor patted him on the shoulder, his lips close to the young man's ear. "There's a packet in your bag. Don't open it until I'm gone."

The young man gave a short nod. "Don't be strangers, both of you."

"Violet's going to help you carry some stuff." The Doctor gestured to the box the girl was hoisting. "Just some odds and ends that'll brighten up the room, help in case of an invasion. You know, that sort of thing. It IS Cardiff after all, and the world nearly comes to an end every other Tuesday."

Greg chuckled, following after Violet. "Thanks. It's been…indescribable." He pulled the door open before dragging his bag over the threshold then hauled it up onto one shoulder. Taking one last look around, he grinned then rushed to catch up to Violet, telling her which building he'd be living in. The door swung closed behind them.

The second the latch settled, the Doctor turned to the external monitors and watched them walk from between the two buildings and turn left, going toward the nearest of the dormitories. When they were out of his monitor range, he began working the time and space controls.

A moment after that, the TARDIS began yawing as it blinked out of this time and place. It had been a very long time since he'd traveled alone. He looked forward to the quiet and dreaded it in the same breath. And maybe…if he was lucky…Violet would forgive him some day. She was safe, though. That was the important thing.

TBC…


	2. Chapter 2

Standard disclaimers… unbeta'd. gave it to my beta last night but he had better things to do **sniff**. Also, I r dum. Shoulda mentioned this was part of a series, etc. My bad.

XYZ

Fade To Black

Chapter 2

XYZ

Managing to find his way around the campus fairly quickly, Jack made his way down a grey stone path to the residence halls. They were ugly toast-and-butter colored brick structures, so they were hard to miss. Picking up speed as soon as he caught sight of them, he came to a full stop when he heard the screaming, cranking sounds of the TARDIS departing.

Oh he knew that sound well, and in his dreams at night he continued running, even though he knew the ship was not coming back, only stopping when he hit the place where the TARDIS once stood. That day on the game station would be with him forever.

Which was why he stopped. He wasn't going to do that again.

It also gave him a rather interesting view of the scene that unfolded. A young girl, maybe fourteen, handed a box to a poor young man who already had more than he could handle as he was laden down with a bag with its own postcode, and began running toward the sound. Turning the corner, she stopped dead. Either she'd actually noticed the sound that didn't belong (people never noticed the blue box, why would they notice the whine of it disappearing or reappearing?) or the Doctor had gone ahead and dumped her the way he'd been dumped. He could sympathize with that.

The young man (dark skinned, thick hair, good looking) put the box down, shrugged off the bag then unzipped it, digging for something. A second later, he pulled out a yellow envelope. Introductions might be in order, Jack decided.

Stomping her way back, the girl was already on her mobile phone. Not getting an answer, she disconnected the call then began dialing again. This call must have connected, because she began a frantic conversation with someone.

He made his way over casually, like he was going to ask her if she was lost on the campus. The kid with the yellow envelope was reading something while he walked in her direction as well, his possessions forgotten on the cement.

Round cheeks, freckles…the kid was too cute for words. Especially with that baby-faced pout she had going on. "No, mum, it's a STUPID idea!" the girl cried out in teenage melodrama, tucking a frizzy, loose lock that had escaped her bandanna behind her ear.

Maybe he had the wrong idea about the situation. Angst was angst, and the Doctor didn't need to be involved in making that happen-especially with a teenager.

Sighing, she disconnected, shoving the phone into the front pocket of a dark green hoodie. "Mum's taking the blame. I think something's up."

The young man handed her the top page from the envelope. "Oh, it gets better. In a 'careful what you wish for' kind of way."

The girl's eyes quickly scanned the page, and she looked up, seeing Jack approaching. He thrust his hand out in an effort to recover the situation. "Hi there. I was wondering if you can help me…" Or he can play dumb and lost. That'd work too.

Shaking his hand, she looked at the other one, hanging loosely at his side for a moment. "I'm just visiting. So I probably can't." Turning, she grabbed the sleeve of the young man's shirt and began dragging her with him—seeming to be in charge of that little relationship. Interesting. "Come on. Lets get you moved in before my brain explodes." A few steps away she looked over her shoulder at him, then to his wrist again—like she'd noticed the leather banded computer. "Campus map's over there. Good luck."

They disappeared into the building, followed by several other students with arms full of stuff.

Oh yeah. This bore investigation.

XYZ

Finding Greg's room, Violet slammed the box down on the floor. It made an uncomfortable clinking and crushing noise when it hit. As soon as Greg was through the threshold, she slammed the door behind him. "Of all the…STRANDING me here! In 2007! Oh, and my mum's OK with it. She says it's some lesson I'm supposed to learn, but I think the Doctor's going off to get himself into trouble without me, which is SO hypocritical! Of BOTH of them!"

Her shoe slammed into the side of the bed, causing the whole thing to shake. Grabbing her arm, Greg tried to shush her. "Vi—we're in PUBLIC? SOME of us have to face these people tomorrow."

She waved the paper in front of him. "Well, it looks like I have to, too! Look at this! Apparently, it's all been 'arranged!' Whatever that means! Oh—and the 'lost American' outside? Time Agent. So the Doctor is off getting himself killed, with Daleks or worse, and I'm trapped on this planet with no TARDIS (thanks Doctor), and a Time Agent, who just waltzes right over to me, the minute I'm outside the ship. I'd tell my mum, but she's part of the conspiracy!"

Seething, she sat down on the bare mattress.

Greg gave her a few minutes. He simply put the over packed bag onto the bed next to her, claiming it as his own and began going through the rest of the packet's contents. The bed nearest the door seemed good. There was another under the window (for the last week, the Doctor seemed to have been fixated on the evils of bunk beds, fortunately there were none of those), but he suspected that bed might be a little extra cold in the winter.

"Well," he began after letting her steam for a bit. "At least you're not going to have to put up with intro composition. Apparently you're a bit of a prodigy, starting your postgraduate in, get this, comparative literature and criticism. You live two floors down, by the way." He handed her a credit card and a student ID. "Let me put my things away. We'll go shopping. That'll cheer ya up."

As soon as it was out of his mouth, he knew it was one of those things he shouldn't have said. Moody women and moody Time Lords were something you didn't want to tango with. May the god of your choice help you if you irritated both.

She scowled at him. "Shopping is NOT going to fix this."

"I didn't say it was going to." He tried to keep his voice as calm and as even as possible. She might have been responsible for him out there, but on terra firma HE was in charge. "But it's done and over-with." Oh, yeah, and he was turning into his dad. "And you need clothes, bedding, the whole bit."

The girl looked utterly defeated. "I guess. I can't believe I'm stuck in a decade without triple-fried chips."

Greg almost gagged. The single most revolting thing through the course of his entire journey through time and space. Huge hunks of potato, fried, breaded, refried, beer-batter dipped and fried one more time for good measure. Then with melted cheese and some kind of ground meat on top. You'd get heart failure just sniffing them, and that was how she was judging an entire decade?

Looking over the identification, Violet growled. "What the hell kind of a last name is Smith? What's wrong with MY last name?"

He put an arm around her. "A very normal last name. You wanted normal, right? Let me be your guide."

XYZ

Hell of a way to spend a Saturday.

The kid's name was Gregory Sheel Patel, that much he'd found out from school records. He'd been registered since the spring for the usual fair of courses, nothing that odd from the records Jack had looked into. The other one…interesting story. The record wasn't entirely populated in the system, from what he could see she was a bit of a child-genius, with a degree in humanities at the tender age of sixteen (Jack still maintained that she looked—and sounded—younger than that), and was more than visiting; she was registered for post-grad level courses, seemingly as of this morning.

Sitting on a bench, inconspicuously reading a newspaper from the other end of the lawn, he kept an eye on the door. They'd have to leave some time—they needed to eat, or go to some activity, or something.

The whole thing was odd. It could be one long, sloppy coincidence, wrong place, wrong time, that kind of thing. She seemed awful young to be in the Doctor's entourage. He was crazy, but he wasn't reckless.

But really, what were the odds?

It was another few hours before they came out. Jack followed them into a clothing establishment that catered to the young and tragically hip. They came out with nothing. He did notice they'd seemed to have a fair time mocking the t-shirts dedicated to thirty-year-old bands from other countries. At least they were properly cynical. He'd really hate to spend the day trailing after young hopefuls that ended up being totally unrelated to this morning's incident.

The next shop was a bit more useful—standard attire for a university student—jeans, t-shirts, more of those ugly little hooded tops. The girl complained about how hypocritical her mother was, the entire time. 'They' didn't trust her, 'they' didn't believe in her…Whoever 'they' were. Her parents, he supposed.

Keeping his head down in a rack of replica football jerseys, Jack tried to flip through inconspicuously. All he could do was keep wondering if he had been that annoying and melodramatic at that age.

Still—unfortunate rats nest of hair aside, she reminded him of someone. The accent was London, with a bit of something else, but other than that, the vibe died right about there.

His hand paused on a red and white uniform, and he realized the girl had stopped complaining, and the young man was no longer telling her that 'they' probably intended nothing of the sort—that she was being melodramatic (thank God someone else thought so too—the teenage emotions were drowning him). But it was quiet. Maybe they were paying for her purchases. Whipped boyfriend would carry them for her, no doubt.

"What do you want?" a voice behind him asked in quiet seriousness.

Slowly, he turned around. She didn't even come up to his shoulder and didn't have a curve on her body, but when she crossed her arms over her chest like that, he didn't doubt that SHE thought she could tear him apart (ah, the precociousness of youth). He pulled out a wallet, flashing a bit of psychic paper. "Jack Harkness, I was just--"

She didn't even bother looking at it. "Don't."

He smiled innocently. No way to charm your way out of a situation when the intended recipient probably hadn't hit puberty. "Don't what?"

She'd be a late bloomer. Go to her ten-year reunion and make the boys cry. "Jack Harkness, you might want to take another look at your identification."

Slowly he pulled it back and snuck a peek. There were two fat little ponies dancing across the slip of paper. "Nice," he said, honestly. Usually someone had to actually come in contact with the paper to leave a residual impression of what they wanted others to see on it. The moving images were a nice touch.

The young man walked over with a bag. "Everything ok?" he asked casually and then took a good look at the psychic paper. "Showoff." Yeah, they'd definitely been around the galactic, time-traveling block, as it were.

The girl nodded. "Have a good day, Mr. Harkness. And I really hope I don't see you around."

Spinning on her heels, she headed for the door.

Shoving the wallet back in his pocket, he reached a hand out. "Wait. I just wanted to ask you a few questions." She kept walking. "I just wanted to talk to you about the Doctor." But that didn't sound desperate. Not at all.

Stopping in her tracks just outside the shop, he saw her back arch, like a cornered cat. Gotcha.

Turning around again, she glared at him. There was a very un-melodramatic type intensity there. She took herself seriously, at least. "I'm just trying to figure out—do I tell Torchwood that you're a Time Agent, or do I tell the Time Agency that you're muckin' with Earth development? Maybe I can do both. See who gets ya first."

Grabbing the bag off of her friend, she marched off, as fast as those short, twiggy legs would take her.

A thin smile spread across his lips. "Oh, Miss Violet Smith…you know so much more than you ought, about so many things."

XYZ

The Doctor leaned heavily against the console. It was for her own good, really. First, this was something she didn't need to be involved in. Second, it might give her a chance to sort her feelings about 'normal' and 'settling' down and such. It might only be the imitation of normalcy, but at least she'd get to give it a try.

"She's going to hate me forever," he grumbled into the speakerphone wired haphazardly to the console.

She was sixteen, she thought she was immortal (didn't help that she almost effectively was). Sure, he could have used his current…predicament as some kind of 'no, really, you're not invulnerable' lesson but when Daleks were involved, he just couldn't bring himself to.

On the other end, Rose sighed. "She'll get over it."

Somehow, the Doctor doubted that. Leaning closer to the phone, he shook his head. Rose should have been on her daughter's side in all this. Really. "Oh, like you got over it? I seem to recall you molesting my TARDIS to get back to the game station and certain death. And since I learn from my mistakes just how stubborn and petulant the Tyler women can be, I dump her. In Cardiff, Grand Central Station for weird. The Sunnydale of Wales. Captain Wacko's clown camp of evil and doom... If she isn't sucked into a hole in the ground and tortured by mole people, killed by zombies or devoured by creatures from the fifth dimension, yes, she's going to hate me. And no, I don't think she's going to get over it."

There'd been this one time…no telling where they'd come from. Hibernating on an ice planet, escaped from the Void… He nearly had an aneurism (not an easy thing with Time Lord physiology, either) upon seeing her on the wrong end of a Dalek death ray. Pleased though he was that she'd managed to stay alive long enough to be rescued, he'd settle for avoiding future encounters.

Sure, that whole thing had happened when she was twelve, and she had four more years' experience in dealing with the uglies of the universe, but this situation was… unique. Mostly because she was tied up in it. If he could remove her from the equation, he might be able to… massage the numbers in his own favor.

"She'll get over it," Rose reiterated quietly. "I'm mostly over it."

"MOSTLY?" the Doctor yelped. "Some day a Tyler woman is going to listen to something I say, and I'll drop over dead, right then and there. Just from the shock."

He hadn't been this worried about Susan hating him, or anyone else he'd given a quick shove off to. Which mean he was one soft Time Lord. Well, he consoled himself, at least she'd be alive and not a science experiment enough to hate him for ditching her under partially false pretenses.

Rose laughed then, and it cut through some small bit of the tension. "Well, I already took the blame. Which is fine. I'm perfectly fine with being a hypocrite, as she was so apt to point out when she called. I have a one mortal danger at a time policy for her. Until she's twenty-six, at least. Daleks OR Torchwood. Not both."

"Oh please," he scoffed at the phone. How much better it would have been to have this argument (heated discussion), in person. The little tan speaker grill stole some thunder. "Listen to you. Daleks, Cybermen AND Torchwood."

"And look how THAT ended up. No. I have a strict 'one thing that's trying to kill a Time Lord at a time' rule. And if she doesn't like that, well, she can lodge a protest with the child protection authorities." The last was said with a trembling laugh. "What's done is done. She's safe, and hopefully getting herself sorted. Which means that we need to stop worrying about Little Miss The Sky Is Falling and work on the problem at hand. Before the sky actually falls—in either universe."

The Doctor grimaced. She was right—onward to the problem that had precipitated this whole bit of madness. Stupid Torchwood and their stupid messing with the stupid Void.

TBC…


	3. Chapter 3

Standard disclaimers. Thanks to Krypto for the quick read thru. All typos belong to him ; )

XYZ

Fade To Black

Chapter 3

XYZ

Lying in the grass, Violet tried to mentally persuade the leaves to stop falling on her. It wasn't working. It left her with eating her sandwich as quickly as possible and brushing leaves off of her bare arms intermittently. She wouldn't have even bothered with it, if Greg hadn't given it to her, and it wasn't peanut butter and banana (the shameless hussy—he knew what she liked).

Her friend sat next to her, back against a tree. "It's a bit…chill, don't you think? Of course you don't think. Never mind. The dining hall isn't bad."

Finishing the last of the sandwich, she swallowed as quickly as possible. "It's a hall. It's very hall-like. I once had a traumatic experience involving Henry V and a flying chicken leg. I can't handle the narrow tables and the wood paneling. I start looking around me for self-propelled chicken bones." She sighed dramatically. "All things Shakespeare left out of the history plays."

Soda fizzed around Greg's mouth and down his chin. He pulled the bottle away and wiped a hand on his sleeve. "Don't say things like that when I'm drinking." Screwing the lid back on, he put the soda next to him in the grass. "Seriously. How was the first day of classes?"

Sitting up, she brushed the crumbs off of her. "Apparently I'm a post-post modernist in my interpretation of the Bard, but a classical feminist in my interpretation of Marlowe and Bacon. It means I think of myself as independent, but I'm really very needy." Seeing the look of shock on Greg's face, she laughed. "The utter ridiculousness of having a professor with duel doctorates in literature and psychology. He's an astrologer, but with literature."

The young man regaled her with his own tale of teachers far too in love with the sound of their own voices for a few minutes, until he realized she wasn't listening. "What?" he asked.

She was staring across the lawn. "This whole place is creepy-weird. I'm not saying it's not nice. If I had to get stuck somewhere for an indeterminate period of time, this or Disney World will do. But it's got the creep. All kinds of things going on under the surface. It never feels right. It's like… something's trying to push its way through. Think…Alien, but on a galactic scale. It just…feels…gross. Like the whole place is coated in…subatomic slime. Especially at night."

Still concentrating on some bushes on the other side of the lawn, Violet got her feet. Her friend followed suit, not quite sure what she was getting at.

Slowly, she began walking towards them, ignoring people in her path. "There's a rift running through here. It's like a magnet for weird. Not that I'm complaining. I don't have to connect my phone to anything to boost the signal to call mum. But there're so many things that don't belong here. Not just the Time Agent."

Reaching the bushes, she dug around inside, pulling out something warm and tiny and squishy that purred when she picked it up. "Alzy. Baby at that. But where there's a baby, there's a mama." It cooed, its orange and tan fur rippling as its soft, limbless body moved around in her grasp. Her fingers tickled what appeared to be the belly of the creature, and it squirmed. "Thought I saw something odd and not quite cat-like rolling into here. Where's your mama, little girl?"

XYZ

Running a hand through her hair, Rose sighed, placing the phone back on the cradle on Pete's desk. "Well, that was less than helpful." She began pacing in front of it, trying to think of their next move. "Melvin won't tell me what R and D has been up to, because he was told not to tell ME. Explicitly."

The library had grown dark during the phone conversation, so Pete turned a lamp on. Folding his hands in front of him, he watched her move back and forth listlessly. "Which means we get someone else to do it. But now he'll be looking for someone to do that." He leaned back in his chair. "We could just confront them. We know they're doing something. Daleks don't just fall out of the Void for no good reason."

Rose stopped pacing. Hands on the edge of the desk, she leaned on it, ever so tired. They'd been going in this endless circle with Torchwood since they'd taken out that single Dalek. It figured they'd call Rose and Mickey in to clean up a mess that they, themselves, had created.

That had been a week ago. She'd conspired with the Doctor to get Violet some place safe (she admitted to being just as big of a hypocrite as the girl had accused her of—and no, her daughter wasn't going to forgive either of them any time soon), and they'd spent the entire last week trying to sort the mess out. The Doctor had done his best to be sure nothing had 'fallen out' of the Void on his end, and trying to figure out why, if the Dalek was going to escape the Void, it wouldn't be at the weak point in Norway, why it would be in that universe's London.

The Doctor hadn't been too keen on leaving her in Cardiff—their own past record with the place being a very good reason against it. But Rose had been a sixteen year old girl with a crush once. She'd dropped out of school for Jimmy Stone. She could trust Violet to stay in Cardiff (even if only for a while) if that Greg Patel boy was there.

It was also probably to be trusted that the boy wouldn't do anything improper towards her daughter; she could trust the young man to believe that the Doctor WOULD leave him inside the nearest active volcano if he did. There was also the very low probability, from what she'd heard of the situation over the last year, that he was interested in her. Which, of course, made Violet try all the harder. Ahh. Youth.

This current problem involved Torchwood, Torchwood wanted Violet where they could keep an eye on her, and Rose wasn't handing her daughter over. So, stuck on Earth to deal with school and unrequited love it is. Besides—there were some things Violet really should just let the grownups handle.

Pete was calling up some files on the computer, pulling together their evidence of the contact they'd made with the Dalek; mostly a few photographs of some shrapnel that Torchwood had hastily cleared away, probably never to be seen again.

One Dalek they could kind of, sort of, almost handle. An army? It'd be a massacre. There'd be no Doctor to bail this world out, as he'd saved the other Earth.

Sitting down in the soft, high-backed chair, Rose shook her head. "Don't even bother. They'll deny it was a Dalek. They'll put it on me an' Mickey. They'll say we're trying to start trouble." Things had been growing tenser and any leeway for acting on her own authority she once possessed had long since been revoked. Rose was a necessity and a liability to Torchwood, so they tried to keep her at distance now, only calling her in when it was something that couldn't be handled by those in 'the know.'

Pete frowned, sitting back again, away from the computer, leaving his work go.

Closing her eyes, she tried to relax, but the knots in her neck and between her shoulder blades wouldn't permit it. "We could raise all the bloody hell in the world about it being a Dalek, but they won't believe me. They've never seen one here. And when I say it's more dangerous than an army of Cybermen, they won't believe that, either. First, it's been too long. They've forgotten what the Cybermen did. Second—they still think they're in control of this little experiment."

The hubris was mind-boggling. Perhaps it was the destiny of any such organization in any universe that existed outside the normal bounds of accountability to become to arrogant for its own good, and the good of the planet, really, when it came down to it.

Pete watched her for a moment, seeing the toll this last week had taken upon her. He gathered his thoughts before he spoke, knowing he had to get her back on track. "So, what do we do then? Just wait for the Doctor? Because if he finds anything at all, it won't be good news."

Rose's head lulled back and forth against the soft leather back of the chair. "I don't know. I don't see any way to get on top. It's easy for the Doctor. Just swan in, storm the Bastille, solve the problem at hand and be out again before the repercussions start snowballing."

Which would take dismantling Torchwood permanently. Pete wasn't entirely certain the world could do without Torchwood. Of course, he wasn't sure the world could survive it, either. "So if reasoning with them won't work," he began, "that leaves us with countering their activities—which we seem to be losing the battle with, mounting a coup—which I don't think either of us have enough popularity for—or blackmail."

Slowly, Rose's eyes met his. "Right. And what do we have, and against whom? I think we'd better start thinking up an option number four."

XYZ

An unpleasant afternoon ensued of trying to discretely look inside dumpsters for a large hairy thing with no limbs. They'd started out around the campus, but hadn't found so much as a trace of the 'poor little thing's' mother.

However, the more they broadened their search, the more Greg found out about these furry little terrors. Oh, they were cute when they were small, but a grown Alzy could rip a man's head off. Even without limbs.

Which was exactly how he wanted to spend his first week back in normal society—hunting down aliens that had no business interrupting his higher education. And as the afternoon was wearing on and the sun slunk lower in the sky, making the shadows long and heavy, his jacket did less and less of a good job keeping the wind out. Shoving cold fingers into his pockets, he looked at Violet, hoodie still tied around her waste from this afternoon, when it was far warmer.

Wincing as Violet dropped the lid of the dumpster and it clanked shut, Greg wondered if it would even be worth it to ask if she happened to be cold in the short sleeve black shirt which declared that 'stupid people are dumb.' She probably wasn't though. "Hey!" he called out as they came out of the slightly putrid smelling alley. "You should put your jacket on." There'd already been a few stares from passers-by, in a few minutes little old ladies would be asking her if she intended to catch pneumonia.

With a sigh, Violet did as he instructed, acting like it was a burden every single moment. That was a thing she always forgot about 'blending in.' Being dressed like the natives wasn't always necessary. Being dressed appropriately for the weather… that was just the thing.

They stopped bothering with anything smaller than a restaurant dumpster around sunset. The little creature was the size of a piece of fruit and fit easily into the front pocket of her dark green hoodie.

Squinting down alleys, Greg watched her stuffing her collar-length frizzy locks into the hood, then moving some things in her pockets. "Adorable baby monster goes in the right pocket, sonic devices in the left," she muttered. "So far it hasn't run away."

The young man had to hold back a snicker. He'd never actually seen Violet's cat. On two occasions he had been presented with dead rodents on his doorstep in the morning, so the cat was still alive. Well, at least up until a month or two ago. "We're not allowed pets in the building," he warned.

She pouted a bit—he wasn't sure if it was because she wouldn't think of it, or because she WAS thinking of it. After opening a few more dumpsters, they just walked around listlessly, seeming to sense the futility of trying to look in the dark for something that obviously didn't wish to be found. Mostly it was an excuse to talk without people staring at them oddly.

Greg gave her the painfully detailed account of his daily phone call from his mother. His mum insisted upon calling at seven in the morning, when sane students were sleeping, mostly because she knew that's when he'd answer—he wouldn't be in class, and he wouldn't be somewhere without his mobile. Every day. Like clockwork.

His second oldest sister was "killing" mum by sleeping over a man's house without any sort of betrothal. This was apparently good enough for his mum—just the promise of eventual wedding vows and you could shag your head off. He'd never understand her—he and all of his siblings had westernized names, and they certainly didn't keep every custom, but some things she just…had her own interpretation of, and heaven help you if you didn't subscribe to mum's interpretation. You were in danger of being nagged to death.

His dad's work schedule had changed again, his oldest sister was having trouble getting the baby to sleep… the litany went on and on. He knew the minutia of every minute of every day for every member of his family.

And Violet was listening to every word he said, with the utmost intensity. Maybe he should swap phones with her, and the next time his mother rang his mobile, she could go "uh huh, umm hmm, uh huh" in his place. She wouldn't even have to feign interest; she liked this day-to-day gossip stuff.

He'd only spoke to his mother a dozen or so times in the last year (had only been about a week or two for his mum), and it had been blissful. Now she was making up for it.

This thought, which he had apparently expressed out loud, had put Violet in another mood. The Doctor wasn't answering her calls, and her mother wasn't giving any information up, but sounded a bit more tired every time the girl called. "I bet you any amount of money Daleks are involved," she whispered conspiratorially. "He nearly dropped one in his drawers the one time I encountered any at all, and I really wasn't even in any trouble until he showed up."

Greg asked exactly how that had worked itself out. It seemed a little unlikely, even to his less than experienced mind, that she'd be 'fine' with a bunch of Daleks.

Shoving her hands into the front pockets of her hooded top in a slightly Doctor-like motion, she shrugged. "That's how being the bait goes. And trust me, I'm used to it by now. The person with the shorter legs and who runs the slowest has the highest probability of capture—we can see who that is in our relationship.

"They were under orders not to kill me. So I annoyed them for hours. Almost cracked one—it wanted to exterminate me so bad it was practically oozing hate. I mean, you could see the hate condensing on the outside in little droplets like it was a fizzy soda of hate and loathing. But anyways it had orders. Couldn't perform its primary function cos of the orders, and it was forced to baby-sit me." She shrugged. "Of course, the second the Doctor shows up, they don't need me any more."

Apparently there'd been a lot of running and hiding involved, but eventually the lance of Daleks were destroyed, and she got a hug and reprimand. Because, y'know, reprimands will make her legs longer or make her run faster. But she wasn't bitter, nope, not at all, Greg thought, as he listened to her complain about just how 'out of touch' the Doctor was. Old complaint, new anticdote.

Stopping in the path, she looked up. They were at the door to the residence hall. "Home again, home again, jiggity jig." She waited for him to go in, but he didn't move. "It's one. I'm sure you have class work to do, or something."

"And you don't?" Dumb question, he knew. But he wanted to know what she was up to.

The girl shrugged, taking the little ball of fur, which was now purring contentedly, out of her pocket. "Still gotta find mama. And I've read all the texts for the courses, I'm not tired…"

Greg shot her a smug grin. "You really hate your roommate, don't you?"

She didn't seem…unpleased to have been found out—she just shrugged in acceptance, still stroking the limbless creature. "Two words come to mind: Dreadful and witch."

Slapping her arm with a chuckle, he headed up the couple steps to the glass door. "Remember—normal people need sleep. They also show up in their own rooms once in a while, eat regularly and dress appropriately for the weather. If you can see your breath, you need a jacket."

Violet saluted. "Yes, mum. Sir. Mum. Good night."

Still smiling, she watched him walk into the building and out of sight. As soon as her friend was gone, she began walking across the lawn, her canvas shoes getting wet in the grass as she dragged her feet slightly. Making her way to the library, she almost went in, but ended up walking past, trying to think of something fun to do while everybody else slept. Well, there was always trouble to get in to. She was certain if it was there, she could find it.

There were fates worse than Cardiff, she supposed. The company certainly wasn't bad, and there was enough to keep her busy after all the sensible people were in bed. Without the Doctor there to drive her into her room at night, she was sleeping less and less, and seeming to need it in ever decreasing quantities. The work for her courses didn't occupy nearly enough of her time—it was hardly Highest Maths, like calculating the path and trajectory of the TARDIS through the Vortex (in your head, and on the fly). Of course, mathematics and the sciences would have been cheating, but only insofar as being able to read War and Peace in two hours was cheating. Basically—idle hands make trouble. She'd have been in serious trouble if there weren't things like going on silly Alzy hunts, and the like.

The 'like' being her current attempt at getting into trouble. It wasn't so much inspiration as desperation—she was really in want of something to do. Even capture and potential torture was better than the six days worth of ennui that had built up in her system. Which was disappointing, because she was trying so hard to be normal.

Stopping in her tracks, she called out loudly, "are you as bored as I am, Jack Harkness? You'd have to be, to follow me for this many hours."

They'd been following each other off and on for six days. It was closest thing she had to entertainment, and the nearest thing to a problem to wrap her mind around that she'd probably see on this planet. Oh God, she thought. Earth was supposed to be home. It wasn't supposed to be the place where good adventures went to die.

All the sensible forces of evil should have been in bed at this hour. A shadow spoke. "I just want to talk."

She didn't turn around, merely waiting for him to join her. "Alright. Since you haven't tried to kill me at all in the last week. You at least have me curious. What does a man moonlighting for two evil organizations want with the Doctor, and what makes you think I'll tell you anything?"

He was wearing a long grey coat, cut a little too perfectly. His hands were inside his pockets—she didn't know if he was cold, or if he was keeping a weapon at the ready. "I don't work for the Time Agency. Not any more. We had a… difference of opinion regarding some things. And Torchwood is NOT evil, but that's not relevant, is it?"

Violet stopped, turning to him. "It's very relevant. And don't even tell me they're not. It's been what? A year since the invasion? Who's fault was that? 'Oh, I don't know what this is or what I'm doing…lets just blunder in and rip a hole in the universe and let the Daleks out of the Void. Brilliant. The lot of you." Her voice caught with the last. That invasion was why her mum was in one universe and the Doctor was in another. "Ultimately, Torchwood is the reason why I haven't seen my mother or the rest of my family in nine years. So excuse me if I don't think there's a single version of reality where you people aren't evil."

Jack walked to a near-by stone bench, sitting down. His hands were still in his pockets, Violet noted as she sat as far away from him as the surface would allow, sliding her hands into her pockets inconspicuously as well.

The man was quiet for a moment, collecting his thoughts. He had her here, the instinct was to ask questions as quickly as possible, but given the girl's history with his organization, slow might be better. "Yeah. I wouldn't be too happy with Torchwood either, if that happened to me. So, lets start over. Hi, I'm Captain Jack Harkness—fifty-first century, former Time Agent. But right now I have no psychic paper, no Torchwood credentials. I just have some questions that I, personally, am looking for the answer to. And what about you? Where're you from?"

Her left hand wrapped around the sonic staple remover. It was more of a novelty item than anything else—removed staples and repaired the damaged paper or other surface—but she was fond of the 'everything else' setting, and happened to be the only thing resembling a weapon at her disposal.

She wondered how vague she could be. "Earth, London, near-future. I'll give you a hint—after the Martian Joint Research Treaty and before triple-fried chips." That was a nice fifty-year period. Not that it mattered—she'd left out the bit about being from another version of reality. That'd be like kissing on the first date.

He really did have pretty blue eyes, she thought, then realized she was staring at them, and he was looking at her intensely in return. "So the Doctor's coming back for you?" Why did he sound so excited about it? That couldn't be healthy.

As casually as possible she shrugged. "You know how it is."

Grimacing, Jack shifted, leaning closer towards her. "I have an idea. But I really need to know."

Before Violet could inform him that, no—no he DIDN'T need to know, there was a shriek and the sound of metal scraping against cement, somewhere over near the dining hall.

Both were on their feet before the second cry rang out. "Hold that thought," they declared in unison, taking off full speed for the source of the noise.

Ok, so her day was getting better, Violet conceded.

TBC…


	4. Chapter 4

Standard disclaimers apply. Krypto beta'd, but didn't actually SAY anything. All complaints about errors should be sent to him.

XYZ

Fade to Black

Chapter 4

XYZ

Violet stopped at the foot of the body of a man—she assumed it was a man—which happened to be missing its head. Jack went past like he didn't even notice it (or it wasn't relevant) and opened the still-moving dumpster. The mass of metal shifted against the ground, digging into the cement as it moved. Whatever was inside was thrashing wildly. "I swear, I checked that dumpster," the girl muttered.

The creature inside snapped toward Jack and he let the lid fall on it. "Did you actually try looking UNDER anything?"

Looking away quickly, Violet blushed. "No." She decided she hated Earth and she never wanted to come back.

Jack pulled out a silver headset and pushed a single button on it. "I need a cleanup and containment…" He stuck his head out of the alley, looking for a street address or name.

The dumpster began jarring again, and she took a few steps toward it. The metal box bucked wildly and tipped forward. When it slammed into the ground, it shuddered with an echoing crash. It would be impossible for anyone to NOT have heard that—which meant they'd have company soon.

A limbless creature leapt out at her, pinning Violet to the ground. Its hot, humid breath blew against her entire face, slime dripping onto her cheek. Clenching her eyes shut, she tried to reach for her pocket—either of them—but she was held down too securely by the stony muscles of the adult Alzy.

Claws came flying out of the folds of flesh, tearing at her torso. Turning her head away, she couldn't even manage a cry of pain.

The air electrified and a whining boom erupted behind her, knocking the creature off of her. It landed to her left, a smoking black hole on its side. Violet scurried back away from it, pressing bleeding forearm to bleeding stomach. Her back hit the brick building behind her, and she looked up at Jack. "What did you do that for?" Her face twisted in pain and anger, she gasped, trying to keep control of herself.

He crouched beside her. "I suppose you'd like to be eaten? Look, just stay still. Keep pressure on it. I have some people coming--"

She trembled and the intellectual part of her knew that her body was going into shock. Telling herself to just not do it didn't seem to help. "It just wanted its baby." Her teeth chattered as she spoke. "It was going after my pocket."

Moving her arm slightly, Jack inspected the slices before putting pressure back on it. "And if it kills you to get to your pocket? Then what good is that?" The kid had no perspective—that thing had also beheaded somebody. At the end of the alley, a black SUV pulled up, tires screeching as it came to a halt. Jack waved a hand at the occupants as they stepped out. "We'll get you fixed up," he promised.

As soon as Jack looked away, Violet slid her bloody, torn hand into her left pocket, grabbing the staple remover. Her fingers were barely able to work it, but she managed to aim it at the dumpster.

The hinges snapped off with a spark that lit up the alley, a second after that the paper and plastic contents of the metal box ignited.

Struggling to get to her feet, Violet took off for the opposite end, away from the van and the approaching people. She was not going to be dissected by Torchwood—in any version of reality. She'd sooner run through all of her regenerations or throw herself into a sun.

Making it a few blocks before she had to stop, the girl leaned against the doorway of a shop, trying to catch her breath. Police sirens blared in the distance, approaching rapidly. Taking a few steps forward, trying to get on with it, she stopped, heat and cold spreading through her at the same time. Speaking of regenerations…

Don't be melodramatic, she told herself. Just get home.

XYZ

Earth, London, 2355…Cardiff, 1283; New Moscow, 3422…

The good news was that all the tears in the fabric of reality were relegated to a single planet. The bad news was that the tears were popping up all over time, with no rhyme or reason that could yet be discerned. The odd news was that as soon as the tears opened, they healed themselves again.

The Doctor would find it, set coordinates, and before the TARDIS could even drop out of the Vortex, it'd be sealed up again. Which was kind of good—it meant he didn't have to force fissures closed. But why were they opening, and why all over?

Staring at the figures on the monitor, he leaned against the console. This was maddening. The kind of problem he should have set before a girl with infinite patience for the types of maths that required thousands of calculations to isolate a single variable. It might have taken her a week, but she'd have probably found an answer. Of course—the Doctor suspected he didn't have a week. The cracks were appearing with increasing frequency.

Besides, she'd been appropriately dumped in a place where she couldn't get into too much trouble, so it was out of his hands. Now wasn't the time to regret what he'd done, or miss her company as badly as he suddenly did.

Think of it as a trial run for the part where she leaves the nest permanently, he told himself. Didn't help. But he kept saying it.

Thus far nothing had fallen out on his side that he could tell. Once the cracks closed, the Void radiation dried up, which would have not been the case if something had come through.

This would have been easier if he'd have had some way to tell if there was someone on the other side who could tell him if this behavior was happening in the other dimension as well. Unfortunately he was fresh out of people with a time and space machine in other dimensions.

Pete had collected quite an array of technology, either swiped from under Torchwood's nose, or invented by himself. The Doctor had also given Pete plans for some things in the last few years—signal tracers, incase Torchwood ever decided to try pulling his TARDIS through the void again, boosters so that Rose could call the ship whenever she wanted. Other tidbits of fun and destruction. Nothing that would tell him what was happening at other points in time with the cracks in the void.

Well, now that he'd established what he didn't have, what did he have? Besides good looks, tons of smarts and a smidge of luck just for measure. He knew where and when these bursts had been, perhaps he should translate that into trying to figure out where they would appear in the (relative to him) future. Which should hopefully translate into figuring out the ever-pressing WHY.

Leaving Rose to answer the problems of WHAT and WHERE. He knew she was competent, but he hated that she was playing the subterfuge game with Torchwood alone. It felt like they should be doing this together, somehow. Holding her hand, running, blowing something up.

He sighed, shaking his head, as if that would somehow get the sentimentality out of there. That time in their lives was gone. He should just be glad they had a chance to work on this problem in tandem, even if it was across a very great divide.

Adding figures and variables to his datasets, he started compiling the data in various configurations. Facts and figures were what they were. Trying to figure out what they meant—that was where alchemy came into play sometimes. Which meant that this was going to take time… time he sensed he didn't have.

XYZ

Jack went after her as soon as he explained that the creature was dead, and they'd need a level two clean up. His team would know what to do from there. He did tell Owen to stick around the area, not to go back with the others. If he did find the girl, she was going to need medical attention.

He knew better than to take the team's medic with him. The girl might tolerate Jack, but she was terrified of Torchwood. Fear was the only thing that could get a girl with wounds like that on her feet and running.

Finding a bloody handprint on a window, he knew he was going in the right direction. How the hell fast could a five foot, nothing girl run with blood loss? There wasn't any trace of her.

They were, however, near the dorms. Snapping his fingers, he cut across the lawn. Flashing the psychic paper, he said he was with campus security and needed to question a student about a time-sensitive matter. Taking the steps two at a time, he hit a few buttons on his wrist computer, pulling up her student record again—third floor, room nine.

There was another smear on the handle of the door to her room, but he went past. There were a few droplets of something dark on the grey carpet—he didn't even need to look to know it was blood.

At another time in his life, he'd have enjoyed this. Especially when the trail lead to the ladies showers. Glad it was late enough that he didn't need to explain to a gaggle of girls getting ready for bed what he was doing, he pulled back the curtain on the only shower cubicle currently in use, entirely certain of what he'd find there.

Looking down at the fully clothed figure slumped against the wall, he shut the water off. "Kids now days," he muttered, sarcasm and humor lost for him.

Head smashed against the tiles, she was entirely dead to the world. He slid an arm under her, moving her into a position not guaranteed to cut off all air flow, and then began pulling back the shredded remains of her jacket, looking for the wounds.

Oh, that was interesting.

They were there, and they were deep—but the bleeding had stopped, and they were already beginning to heal. Not quite with the speed of recovery that he possessed himself, but the area around the cuts running across her entire abdomen was red, like an infection setting in, but the edges of the wounds were coming together, albeit almost imperceptibly slow.

Grabbing the wrist on her right hand, the one not slashed, he checked for a pulse. It was slow, possibly erratic, but it was there. Pulling back her eyelid, he was about to call Owen when her mangled left hand grabbed his wrist. She had a tight grip for a few seconds, but then it slid back down into the puddle on the floor of the stall.

Her bottom lip trembled. "Don't. I'm fine." Trying to sit up, she just ended up smacking her head off of the tile floor.

Sliding a hand under her neck to keep the girl from killing herself out of stubbornness, Jack sighed. "Right. The brave front is noted, but I'm not buying it, kid." No telling how much blood she'd lost; there wasn't much left on her dark green jacket, it had probably all run down the drain. Pressing the dialer on his headset, he felt her go limp again. "Owen, I found her. Cut up and playing a martyr, refusing help. Just trace my signal, tell the front desk you're with campus security."

"No," she muttered. "No doctors."

"You're not really in a position to argue," he informed her tersely. The Doctor knew how to pick 'em, really. Rose had been stubborn. This girl was just… suicidal. Mighta been why she'd been dumped.

Trying to sit up, she forced her eyes opened, right hand twisting the sleeve of his coat. "I'm fine."

Her pupils were dilated, and he knew she was looking right at him and not seeing him. This definitely took stubbornness to a new level. "Sure you are," Jack whispered as her eyes rolled back in her skull and her head fell limply on his upper arm.

Hand twisting his coat still, she made one more attempt at consciousness. "No doctors," she pleaded. "No Torchwood. They wouldn't know what to do with me."

"I think we're pretty competent, thank you very much."

She took a few deep breaths, and then opened her eyes again. Those black depthless pupils looked him in the eye, fright and desperation renewing her strength enough for her to sit up. "They'll dissect me." Her breathing grew erratic with the effort of trying to go further. "Please," the girl pleaded one more time, falling against him.

Jack sighed as water squished off of her waterlogged body, drenching him. "Look, kid…like I said. You're not in much of a position to negotiate."

TBC…


	5. Chapter 5

Standard disclaimers. Thanks to Em for her super-fast, super-awesome beta. She is truly Kates Master : )

XYZ

Fade To Black

Chapter 5

XYZ

She really wasn't in a position to negotiate. But he understood her fear.

This was officially Torchwood's jurisdiction. He should just bundle her off back to the office and let Owen either cure or vivisect her. Still…he decided to just check. Keeping one arm around the waterlogged girl, he pulled back his sleeve, scanning her quickly. Unknown species. Great.

OK, he'd spot the kid the thing on not wanting to go to a hospital, and fear of being dissected by Torchwood, especially if she felt so strongly about the organization.

He had no idea what Torchwood had done to her in the past, but he was certain Yvonne Hartman had something to do with it. The one time they'd met, he'd felt kind of dirty afterwards. 'Cooties,' children's word though it may be, suited the feeling. There wasn't much left of the London office—it seemed like the Doctor had seen to that. But what in the world had Yvonne been up to, before that?

Taking one last look at the wounds, he saw that the edges were pulling back together a bit more. By morning the gashes would be healed, at that rate. Sliding out of his greatcoat, he pulled her out of the remaining water then wrapped her in it.

Hearing heavy footsteps in the maze of showers and sinks and toilets, he gave a whispered call for Owen. "In here."

Putting his box on the ground, he dug under Jack's coat for a hand to check her pulse. "Oh, that's not good." Dropping it, his fingers began searching her neck. "Well, she's breathing. So she's not dead."

"She isn't human," Jack clarified. "But she had a pulse." He'd felt a pulse. He was certain of that.

Pressing fingers to the other side of the neck, Owen nodded. "There it is. That's some advanced biology. I'd have to guess that somehow her body shut off or slowed blood flow to this side of her body, since it's the most torn-up." Pulling back the coat, and a bit of shredded clothes, he marveled at the wounds. "It's like Christmas, but with aliens!" He was way too excited about this, Jack decided. "When we get her back to Torchwood, I'm going to--"

Jack shook his head, standing with his load. "She's not going back to Torchwood." He really hoped he wasn't made to regret this.

XYZ

Rose ran. She didn't look behind her, she didn't try to figure it all out, she just ran. The thick soles of her sensible yet dress code-appropriate two-inch heels clacked against the cement floor as she made her way out of the warehouse, her black suit jacket flapping opened in her wake.

This was not good. Well, that much was obvious, made more so by the sound of another gunshot, a sniper's bullet ripping past her head. That was a warning shot. Quit looking into this, stop asking questions.

Sadly her contact had not benefited from a warning shot. That told her just how badly Torchwood wanted this information to remain hidden—which only made her more determined.

It was a fairly good assumption to make that her time at Torchwood was about to end.

Making her way out of the warehouse, she skidded to a halt at her car, fumbling with the electric door lock. It took thirty whole seconds (twenty more than she was comfortable with) to get the door opened and the car started.

She didn't think they'd follow her further—what point was there in roughing her up, when they'd already made their point by spraying the blood of her contact all over her? But she still made the tires squeal, she peeled out so fast.

This wasn't like the time with the communications tower, where they'd blundered into a discovery that they could both receive and transmit power through the void. This was fully intentional and well planned. They also meant for her to stay out of it.

Fat chance of that happening—and they should have known it.

As soon as she knew her mum was safe, her 'team' was going on the offensive.

XYZ

It was dawn, and Jack couldn't sleep. Slouched in a chair at the foot of his bed, feet propped up on top of the black duvet, he flipped through the menus on the girl's mobile phone. The ID number on the battery didn't return any useful data and the SIM card had been replaced with something else entirely. It looked like a different job all together than the one the Doctor had done on Rose's phone, back in the day.

Rose Tyler. There wasn't a day that went by that he didn't think about her. He'd told her once that she was worth fighting for, and that was so true. Brave, good, beautiful…blonde… she was a better person than he had been, and had made him want to be a better person because of it. It burned inside of him that she was gone. Rose Tyler. Twenty years old and too brave for her own health.

If the disgustingly perky Yvonne Hartman had done something to the girl's family, and that's why she hadn't seen them in nearly a decade, then he'd understand the anger and distrust towards Torchwood. Jack still could taste the bile in his throat when he remembered how he'd felt when he'd seen Rose's name on the list of the dead. If Hartman wasn't already dead, Jack would have probably killed her himself.

Most of the received calls were from her little friend, the rest were "unknown" numbers, which seemed about right. The outbound calls… that was another story. Half a dozen back to her friend's phone, the rest of the numbers weren't displayed as "unknown" but were instead the circular, fractal type shapes he remembered from his time on the TARDIS. Why would outgoing calls be listed like that?

Speed dial looked about the same. A few numbers he could actually see, the other three were unreadable. He looked to the head of the bed, she was still sleeping, a small, round face with full lips that had gone chapped and white standing out in stark contrast to his black pillow case.

Owen said it was entirely possible, since she appeared to be healing herself that she just needed to sleep it off. He'd looked the girl over, grumbling and complaining that there wasn't a whole lot he could tell, with his lack of equipment, trying to persuade Jack into taking her back to the office. He'd said no, and he meant it, though. The girl was sixteen, for heaven sakes, she deserved the preservation of what little was left of her innocence. That wouldn't happen by her waking up in a lab and being terrified out of her mind that she was going to be the next science project. Also, Owen's bedside manner sucked.

Jack didn't know what she was—possibly the Doctor's kind, maybe something else. But if he frightened her, or she was forced to try to escape, he'd never be able to ask her anything. He knew she had at least SOME of his answers--she'd obviously traveled with the Doctor, she was also a very bright kid. She'd apparently gone for the shower to clean the venom out of the wounds. Toshiko had called him around four, saying that the claws were coated in some poison they hadn't seen before, so it seemed that little Violet Smith knew more than them about whatever this creature was.

He'd found the 'baby' that the mother had been going after, still in the girl's sopping pocket, still alive. He'd given it to Owen, to do whatever with. Not high on his priority list right now. Other pocket contents ranged from amusing to mildly entertaining: student ID, credit card with a company that didn't really seem to exist, a square screw, paper clip, stone arrowhead, sonic staple remover.

The sonic staple remover fell under the mildly entertaining category. An office novelty in the thirty-second century that had been modified to have an additional setting which had probably produced the fireworks display that had distracted them long enough for her to get away.

Choosing the first "number" from the list of the unreadable, he rang it. It dialed about twice as many numbers as necessary for even an international call then nothing happened for a long stretch. He was about to end the call when it started ringing.

At the end of the fourth ring, someone picked up. "Violet, sweetheart, do you know what time it is?" a sleepy London-y voice asked. Not very alien sounding, Jack had to admit. What sort of aliens were living (and reproducing!) in London, in the near future? Aliens that could be mistaken for humans. There weren't many of those in the universe, though the Doctor certainly did fall into that category. But wasn't he the last of his kind? Oh, questions without answers.

Looking at the girl, Jack had to smile. Sometimes, it was too easy. "I'm sorry, is this Violet's mother?"

The woman sighed. "Grandmother. What's she gotten herself into now?" She sounded like she fully expected him to say he was with the police and bail was set at some exorbitantly high amount of money.

Jack debated on the truth or not. "She's sleeping right now, but she's not feeling too well, so we thought we'd give her family a call, and this was the first number in her mobile phone."

"Sick?" The disbelief was evident in the woman's voice. "She's not hurt, is she? I knew letting her stay with her friend was a bad idea, no matter what she wanted to."

How much to tell? How much does grandmother know already? He gave a semi-flirty chuckle. "Well, she does have a few scrapes and bruises, but other than that, she seems alright."

The woman on the other end let out some sound that might have been a groan, might have been a growl. "What kind of trouble did she get into? I'll kill that Doctor, once and for all!"

Jack grinned. He shoots, he scores. "Listen, I was wondering, could you tell me how to get hold of this Doctor? She's been asking after him."

Could it really be just that easy? The woman tisked. "Comes and goes when he pleases, doesn't he?" Or not. This whole 'so close, yet so far' thing was going to wear thin soon. "Number should be in her phone, I'd think." There was some shifting in the background. "Wait, I think that's her mum, comin' in the door."

Ooh, mom liked to be out all night. Interesting. His kind of gal.

At the head of the bed, the girl stirred. Letting out a small groan, she rubbed her eyes, then looked around. As soon as she caught sight of the foreign setting, she sat up, looking like she was going to vomit, or pass out again.

Jack got up, her phone still to his ear, and tried to get her to lie back down. "Hey, easy now. Nobody's going to dissect you. Got your grandmother on the phone. She's getting your mom."

She reached up for the mobile, and Jack handed it over—the girl was intent. She'd probably end up overexerting herself or splitting open the mostly healed gashes if he denied her.

Her hand was a little shaky when she got it to her ear. "Gran? No. I'm bein' good." She settled back on the pillow, her eyes closing. "Not the Doctor's fault. I'm perfectly capable of finding trouble on my own. It wasn't even a lot of trouble. Baby muck monsters. It was raining. Just some scrapes, promise." How easily she lied. Jack was more a 'selective truth' kind of guy. She went full-out, though. "No, I'm doing my school work and I'm goin' to my classes--"

She sat up suddenly, her eyes wide. "Gran? Gran! Who's there? Who is that?" Any bit of color that had returned to her cheeks drained out again as she listened a moment more. "Gran?" she whispered finally, something catching in her throat.

Hanging up, she dialed another number—another of the unreadables. "Mum? You haveta get home. Someone's in the house—I-I think they have gran."

There was a pause. "Mum? MUM!" Lips trembling, she put the phone down. "Connection's…gone."

Jack snatched up the phone—it was dead. "Can you call the Doctor? Where are they? Torchwood can--"

Wiping her nose with the back of her hand, she looked up at him with sad, red eyes. "He won't answer. He knows I'm going to tear his head off. Now mum… it's not like there's anything he can do anyway. Or you. We're here and she's there." She swallowed. "That's why he left me here. Bastard."

The Doctor was probably only trying to protect her. Jack sympathized with the sentiment, though. It was also possible that he could help—if she just let him. "What does THAT mean? Where's 'there' as you put it?"

Violet laughed bitterly. "Parallel dimension. Thanks, Torchwood. Mum's a big girl, right? She can take care of herself. God. I hope so. She…works for them there." Sniffing, she started trying to get out of the bed, then she realized she was only wearing a t-shirt and a pair of shorts thirty sizes too big, probably Jack's. "Don't suppose you'd give me my clothes back?"

Jack shook his head. "Not a chance in hell. You stay right there." Sitting down on the edge of the bed, he tried to convey that he wasn't letting her up, just yet. She was trembling, probably from fatigue and/or dehydration, and if that was a parallel dimension, there wasn't anything that could be done anyway. "So how did you end up here?"

She looked past him, lost in some memory. "Possibly the only sad tale in my life where Torchwood isn't the cause. Anyways, there's a path through the Void between the two worlds, but we haven't figured out how to move matter—just energy. Except for one time. Long story, involving a bad wolf pushing a nearly grown TARDIS through the Void. God. I hope she's OK."

Starting at the mention of the bad wolf, Jack grabbed her arm, letting go when she winced. Still not quite as healed as she'd like to let on, he noted. "I've seen that name before. Who—what is the Bad Wolf?"

Violet was saved from having to answer by a knock at the bedroom door. A second later, a dark-haired lady peeked her head around the door. "I have food, coffee, and clothes."

Opening the door the rest of the way, Jack shot her a winning smile. "Gwen. My hero." Noting that she was only holding the one bag, a pink one from some clothing store, he pointed over her shoulder. "I'm hitting the kitchen. She can get dressed. She tries to leave, you have my permission to shoot her," the last was said with an impossibly wide grin. Let the girl judge whether he was serious or not. "No major arteries or anything. Maybe just in the kneecaps." He was so close to answers. It'd be a sin to let them walk right out the door.

XYZ

Violet hoped he knew she was going to have to try to escape. Just as soon as the world stopped spinning and her hands stopped shaking. Then she was going to find some way to help her mum. Or at least find out if her mum was OK.

The woman put the bag on the bed. "It seemed your roommate had an overnight guest. We couldn't get any of your own things." She smiled, and seemed nice enough. Turning around, she folded her arms over her chest, waiting. "It should all fit."

Ignoring the pain of moving and scrambling into the clothes as quickly as possible, she only noticed what they looked like once she was in them. They weren't bad. Perhaps a bit more cheerful than her normal attire. Powder blue baby doll cut t-shirt, olive green canvas boot-cut trousers, and the finishing touch—the powder pink corduroy jacket. Clothes were clothes, she decided.

And they'd get her the hell out of here faster. So far she hadn't been dissected, but she wasn't pushing her luck. "Thanks for the clothes, I guess. I'da just walked in on the witch though. Of course, I did that once already, and I think its done irreparable damage to our ability to cohabitate peacefully. I should set up a web cam, and at least make some money off of it."

The woman laughed, her back still to Violet. "You could just request a room change." She was probably trying to make 'friends' with Violet. Common police technique in some galaxies. Get the nice female cop to talk to the young female detainee, and see if some bond of sisterhood could be generated…

Basically Violet had been on the receiving end of the 'sisterhood' technique for, oh, about seven years. Before that it would be the kind grandfatherly cop with a hot, sweet drink and a toy of some kind. Violet knew how to play the game and act complicit without giving anything away.

Pulling on the pink and brown argyle socks and sliding into the black loafers (seriously not anything she'd wear—it gave off a bad 80's prep vibe), she began quietly putting things back in her pockets. "Better the enemy you know than the enemy you don't. That'd be like playing roommate roulette." When she got to the sonic staple remover, she checked to be sure that the woman—Gwen—still had her back turned.

Flipping it over to her favorite setting, she aimed it at the tile over the woman's head. It was a shame—Gwen seemed nice. Too bad she worked for the devil. Pressing it, it made a whine, but nothing happened. Trying again, she moaned as Gwen turned around. "Of course he's smarter than to just leave this stuff in working order."

Sitting back down on the bed, she sighed, tired and still hurting. "Just so you know, I will escape." After a nap, maybe. Looking at the inside of her forearm, she prodded the scabbing, slightly oozy flesh, willing it to heal.

The woman took off her leather jacket then sat down next to Violet on the bed. "You're not a prisoner. You have had a nasty shock to your system, however. Jack's just worried about you."

Another bitter laugh escaped her. This woman thought she was a stupid kid. "Jack just wants something out of me." He wanted the Doctor, and she couldn't figure out why. Well, she supposed there was always the direct rout.

Behind the two ladies, he chuckled. He was standing in the doorway, crumbs around his mouth and a paper cup of coffee in hand. "Everybody wants something from someone, kiddo. Get used to it."

Violet scowled at him. "I'm not going to sit here while who-knows-what is happening to my mother. The Doctor can be as…infuriating as he wants to be and leave me stuck here without any way to help, and you can try to keep me here, 'for my own good,' and what not, but I can't just sit here. I—I don't care if she's in another…" she trailed off, suddenly very distant.

Gwen and Jack looked at each other. Jack held out a hand, wondering if she was going to pass out again. "Hey, lets get you something to eat," Gwen offered quietly. "Then we'll see what we can do to help."

"Not everyone associated with Torchwood's evil," Jack added, hoping she'd see some tiny bit of sense.

The girl looked at both of them, as if she'd just noticed they were there. "I'm so stupid. Torchwood's trying to punch a hole through on the other side AGAIN—that has to be why the Doctor dumped me here. The amount of energy transference from their side has to be…" she shook her head, excitement building in her voice. "Astronomical. And the Doctor doesn't want me involved because they want me back, and on a dissecting table, or in creepy Torchwood brainwashing boot camp…which is awful sweet of the Doctor… but it makes him do stupid thing…like dumping me with Greg. In Cardiff. On top of a rift. Because it is going to make me try to do something very, very stupid."

She scrambled up on the bed, walking across it. "You, Jack Harkness, are brilliant. Thank you for not dissecting me. But I need to start crunching numbers." Pecking him on the cheek she stepped off the bed, and stumbled, falling through the doorway.

God, Jack thought. At this rate, he was never going to get any answers to his questions. The universe just seemed to forbid it. The next time he asked her about the Doctor, the ground was liable to just open up and swallow them whole, just to spite him.

Being sure to grab her good arm, Jack hauled her to her feet. "AFTER breakfast. Then you can do all the stupid stuff you want."

TBC…


	6. Chapter 6

Standard disclaimers apply. Thanks to Rosesbud for the beta help. I r gewd spellerk.

XYZ

Fade To Black

Chapter Six

XYZ

Breakfast usually immediately followed his mother's daily forty-five minute tangent for Greg. He and Violet had slipped into a morning routine (if six days of doing something could constitute a routine) whereby they'd walk to the dining hall, she'd sit outside while he got something for one or both of them, then they'd eat it on the steps. She really just didn't like it in there.

She wasn't outside waiting for him at 8:05 (oh, the curse of the early class!), so he ran back up to her room, knocking on the door. "Vi, the self-propelled chicken bones are waiting…" he'd probably never stop teasing her about that. Personal information could and would be used as ammo at any point in the future. He wasn't above pot shots, and he certainly wasn't above the use of good old-fashioned shame, like his mother used to make. "Seriously. What're you doing?'

The door opened—it was not Violet. Kathryn (why did they always have to spell it with a Y? It was if even her name thought it was better than your name) peeked her head through the crack, long blonde hair a tangled mess, a mass of hickeys down her neck and collarbone. She also appeared to be wearing nothing but the door. "She isn't here." The door slammed shut.

No wonder Violet didn't want to spend time in her room.

Whistling, he went back down, dialing her number as he took the steps two at a time. She'd either spent the night holed up in the library, reading everything in an entire section, or she'd found trouble. He knew she was going out looking for it after he went to bed, but he let her have it—he was trying to be done with it. Besides, she'da ringed if she'd needed a rescuing, wouldn't she?

Right.

And her phone was going right to voicemail. So what did he do? This was so much easier with the Doctor around. Even if they got separated, they were at least in the storm of trouble, and they had a prayer of figuring things out. Right now, he was looking at the dark clouds on the edge of the storm. It might come his way, it might change directions. What it came down to was he didn't know where to start looking.

Greg was thinking the Time Agent might be a good place to start, but it wasn't like he had a home address listed for the man.

Of course, she could be just fine. Off reading, off getting into totally innocent trouble… In which case there was no point in him missing his first class. Greg considered himself a realist, however, so looking for her it was.

XYZ

Jack had taken the phone off of Violet about ten minutes into the forced breakfast. She kept continually dialing various family members, getting no response.

Sighing, he batted her hand away when she reached for it again. "If you keep calling people, no one's going to be able to get through if they're trying to call YOU." With that, he said he was going to get dressed, and took the phone with him.

With a pout, Violet turned back to the food in front of her; a banana with two bites taken and a half-full glass of water. She had been informed that she was not permitted to so much as move from the table until it was gone. And he'd left Gwen her jailer there, to make sure she did it, too.

She was kind of having trouble stomaching the food. The thought of it just made her skin crawl, but if she mentioned that again, she'd get a speech about how she SHOULD be getting proper medical attention with intravenous fluids and the whole bit. Which left her sitting in awkward silence with her jailer, attempting to force more water down her throat.

Playing the alien card in this whole breakfast scenario didn't work either. 'Captain Jack' as he preferred to be called (Jack Harkness was just too formal, apparently), had pointed out that if she was a carbon-based humanoid, she needed water, plain and simple, and since she didn't appear to be made of silicone, she'd better just start drinking.

Shaking her cup, Gwen drank the last bit, then got up to throw it away. "Congratulations are in order, then."

Violet looked up from the glass of water she was giving the evil eye to. "For getting nearly killed? Or getting caught?"

The woman laughed again. Violet was glad she was so amusing. "None of us has ever seen the inside of Jack's flat. The going theory was that he slept at the office. And in less than eight hours, two of us can now confirm that that he does actually leave now and again."

Shrugging, Violet's attention went back to her glass. She wasn't even allowed a pen and paper to start working on the numbers of her latest crazy scheme until she finished the water. Too bad she didn't have telekinetic powers. What good was feeling the rotation of the earth, when you couldn't make a glass of water evaporate into thin air? "Keeps the mystery alive, I suppose. He's probably very boring, but as long as you don't know that, the condition for the possibility exists that he's interesting."

Sitting back down, Gwen turned her attention to the girl. "So. You're an alien."

Violet rolled her eyes. "Here we go. He leaves and you start playing the good cop and I get the whole alien bit, all at the same time. I was born on Earth, all right? And that's as much as I want to say about it, because it's a whole big long messy story."

"I'm sorry," the woman said quietly.

And she probably was, too. That was the part that irritated Violet the most. She was used to people not meaning what they said, and it caught her off guard when someone actually did. Managing another sip, she put the glass down on the table. "Sorry. Sore spot. I just… technically, yes. I'm an alien. Or you all are aliens to me, or something. I've never figured it out. I thought I was human. Then one day…well, it turned out I wasn't. And, I guess it's mostly ok. But I still wish I was. Still, I get the chance of a lifetime to live a normal life, an actual friend, university, credit card, dorm room, snotty roommate…what do I do? I promptly end up getting gutted by an animal that's escaped from an inner-galactic circus, AND get captured by the people I want least to deal with. And I've been captured by a lot of people in my day." Violet wasn't sure how she felt about this whole thing, but saying it out loud and basically laying it all on the table helped organize it in her mind a bit. No wonder the Doctor prattled.

The woman's hand came to rest on Violet's and she had to resist the urge to pull away. The sincerity was unnerving. "What is normal? I'm not sure I know myself anymore."

Violet had read in history books about the austere and totally complicated society of the Time Lords. If she'd been 'normal' by those standards, she'd have found herself separated from her mother long before the age of seven, as she'd been. She'd have probably never known the Doctor, probably would have never left that planet, Gallifrey. There were drawings, photo representation was, for some reason, forbidden (she was going with the whole mystique thing again), and it did look like a beautiful place. Some people might see the world around them, decide it was perfect, and never want to leave. Would she have been one of those people?

Moot point. Gone before her time. She laughed absently. Growing up in a time and space machine, you take for granted that you can go anywhere, anywhen, within reason. No crossing time streams, no changing events that were set in stone (and there were some—you knew not to touch when you saw no other possibilities—if you did, serious badness happened). But she'd met Mozart, she'd seen the signing of the treaty that created the First Bountiful Human Empire, she'd helped instigate its downfall as well. But she couldn't see her mum, and she couldn't see Gallifrey. Useless.

Who'd put the Time Lords in charge of the whole of time and creation anyway? "I'm a bit…adrift. My…the Doctor's people. They're gone. My mum's some place I can't go, though I do hope to rectify that momentarily. Say I do. What do I do on Earth? Nothing involving maths or sciences—not allowed to interfere with normal human development, bla bla bla, and more rules... Which leaves working in a shop or professor of something silly like East German literature of the 1980's. In which case I'd possibly throw myself from a very tall precipice, repeatedly." Very appealing.

The woman's thumb rubbed the top of her hand gently, and she was reminded of her grandmother, and all of their talks when she was little. There hadn't been anything that tea, a talk, and a held hand couldn't cure. "What would you do, then? If you didn't stay on Earth?"

This lady knew how to ask the tough questions, didn't she? It was more soul-searching than Violet wanted to do first thing in the morning, but this had been plaguing her for years. "I don't know. Same old life. Go somewhere, start trouble, find trouble or have trouble find me." She felt the blood run out of her face when she said that. "Oh God. I don't know how he does it now. Think about it. All of time, all of space. It's not like you're going to… reach the end. To see it all. But that's just all you do, for all eternity. Oh this immortality stuff is for the birds. And I'm getting a zit. You'd think my allegedly superior biology would take care of that."

She looked at Gwen, not just baring her soul, but finally getting to the root of what had been bothering her all of these years. "He's almost a thousand years old. A thousand! Do you know what I'd give to be normal? Just to not know that stuff was out there? Ignorance really is bliss, Gwen Cooper." Panic had set in, tying her stomach into knots, making her wounds throb. For the first time in…as long as she could remember, tears welled in her eyes, and actually spilled out. "I want…I want something I can't have. I opened it. Well, it was opened for me. Pandora's box. I think my future's set."

Violet didn't know when she started clutching the woman's hand for dear life, but when she realized what she was doing, she eased up. "Sorry," the girl muttered. "So. Yeah. Sore subject." She wiped away the tears from her cheeks. There was probably some bi-law somewhere about how Time Lords and Ladies weren't supposed to cry. Showing weakness before the 'lesser' species and all that. "I just—This'll sound weird. I'm sixteen, I'm supposed to think I'm immortal. But… I'd give a lot. Almost anything. To… grow old and die. That's it. That's what I want out of life."

A hand grasped her shoulder, squeezing supportively. "You and me both, kid."

Wiping more tears away, she looked behind, then up at Jack. His hair was wet, and he smelled clean and shiny and new. Sniffing was impolite. So was licking. Mostly this meant she tried just tried to sniff him slightly more discretely. "Don't tell me you have problems dying too? Must be a run on that stuff."

Smirking, Gwen gathered up some of the breakfast refuse. "Our Jack's just special like that." There was a mum living somewhere deep down inside Gwen Cooper.

Jack shrugged, she could tell he was trying to laugh it off, but he felt as deeply about the subject as she did. "Yeah. That's why I want to talk to the Doctor. Seems that on my last outing with the guy, I kind of…kicked it. Shuffled off the mortal coil. Took the dirt nap. Exterminated, even. And yet, here I stand." He spread his arms in illustration. "So yeah. I have a few questions I'd like to put to the good Doctor."

She looked him in the eye, studying him. "Talk about lousy parting gifts—at least I got a credit card without a limit…Exterminated? But you're human. I mean—not even a Time Lord can survive a blast from a Dalek." Standing, she squinted, looking into and past him. "Oh. Wow. It's true." Blinking a few times, she tried to clear it from her mind.

He almost grabbed her arms in his excitement. "So? Thoughts? Ideas?"

Violet's head hurt, looking in there. Sitting back down, she rubbed her eyes. That was… intense. "Definitely stuff floating around in there that isn't Jack Harkness. Not anything bad, per say. But stuff that shouldn't be there. The Doctor would need to tell you more." She knew what it was—she'd seen that energy pattern before. It was the Vortex. The Bad Wolf.

Jack let out a deep, slow breath. That was more information than he had yesterday, but less than he wanted. "So what are you? My computer couldn't identify your species. Are you like the Doctor? A Time Lord, Lady, Person…Thing?"

Violet chuckled. "My thoughts exactly. Who the hell calls themselves a 'Time Lord?' That's like saying 'I can see the whole of space and time, and that makes me so much better than you.' God. No wonder they're all dead." Jack didn't know if it was a wry or bitter smile that tugged on her lips. "Sort of, I guess. Could possibly still be up for debate…"

Frowning, Jack tried to get a solid answer from her, by sheer willpower alone.

Finally Violet relented. There was evasive, and then there was cruel. "I guess. Close as I can be, being from an alternate reality and all." Oh, great evasion, there. That was quality—blame it on being from another universe.

Jack watched Gwen for a moment, she seemed to be clearing things away as slowly as possible. "Finish your water," she ordered, as if she hadn't heard a single bit of the conversation. Oh she was good.

Taking another sip, Violet tried to force it down. Willpower.

For good measure, Jack pushed the plate with the barely-eaten banana towards her. "And another bite of this. Even the Doctor had to eat."

Violet shrugged. "Once in a while. So. Dying to hear stories. Don't run into many former traveling companions. I think SOMEBODY steers clear. Someone MUST tell me what he was like before he became a stick in the mud." Managing one more sip, she pushed the water and plate away from here. "I have to spend a whole lot of money today. I'm probably also going to need an adult to purchase half this stuff. I can't anticipate anyone allowing a kid my age to walk off with enough stuff to blow up a city or tear open a rift." She smiled sweetly, putting on the puppy dog eyes that had gotten her the tiny talking people and the oversized dollhouse with the Doctor. "I'll tell ya about the Bad Wolf…"

XYZ

To a degree, the cracks were being created in time and space randomly. They were relational to the energy bursts the Doctor had discovered coming through the Void, it had taken an hour, but he'd found a formula that would let him predict, based on the intensity of the blast and the length of time between blasts, where the crack would come out in time and space.

The truly interesting part was that it was the act of bringing the TARDIS to that location that was sealing the cracks. He had no idea what Rose's Torchwood was up to, but they were quite serious about it. Evil organizations were such a chore.

Checking over numbers on his monitors, the Doctor set a course. He didn't know what would happen if his prediction about the next place and time was correct, but he was fresh out of things to try.

He was also flying blind at the moment. Rose wasn't answering her phone, nor was Pete. In an act of depressing desperation he'd even called Mickey—truly a sign of the end-times right there. Who the hell knew what they were up against? But whatever was happening… it was happening in the here and now, and he'd better just do his best to sort it.

Coming out of the Vortex, he checked; Ecuador, 2580. Right place, the suspected right time…

Counting down, he saw the tear as it opened on the monitor, rushing to the TARDIS door. Pulling it open, he shielded his eyes. It glowed in the earth like the sunlight off of white-gold, this impossibly bright tear.

If it was consistent with the previous tears, it would be closing in five, four, three…

The TARDIS, which had been parked on solid ground, jolted suddenly, and he was thrown backward, the doors slamming shut. Everything grew cold, that light encompassing the ship, blotting out his vision. There was only one thought in his head before the pain became too unbearable; the wall of light and the ghost shifts.

Blindly staggering to the controls, he tried to power it down. When the ship knocked again, and he was thrown against something (who knew what, though), all he could do was HOPE he'd shut her down. Otherwise…

Well, to put it lightly, he'd be drowning in trouble so deep it could fill the Marianas Trench.

When the light died away, the Doctor realized that yes, yes he we indeed drowning in trouble. But not for that reason—oh no. There were now so many others.

He supposed he'd better go out and meet the natives.

TBC…


	7. Chapter 7

Standard disclaimers apply. Thanks to Rosesbud for the beta help. She am awesome

XYZ

Fade To Black

Chapter Seven

XYZ

It was dark, Rose had figured that much out. She still had all of her limbs and her head hurt. That was about all she had at the moment. Shifting, she realized her hands were bound behind her back, her mouth was taped shut, and she was twisted into an uncomfortable position and was being jarred slightly. Great. She was in the boot of some uncomfortably small car.

There were better ways to travel. Dragged by horses was sounding appealing at the moment.

Why had they taken her? She'd already seen her contact, the projects director, killed in front of her. His blood was still clinging to her skin, now dried and itching. Why would they do that? They had made their point.

Unless…something had happened. Their time table had been moved up, somehow. It was in play. Whatever 'it' was.

Somehow, they'd handle it. She and the Doctor. Violet was safe. That meant that whatever else happened—well, it didn't matter really.

The car came to a stop. She felt the slight bounce in the suspension as the occupants got out, but nothing happened after that.

She remembered now. Talking to Violet, who was upset about Jackie. She'd been driving, speeding her way back home. Before she could even answer to reassure the girl that she was on her way to help gran, she'd been bumped in the back corner, hard enough to spin her tiny two-door. If she'd have been paying attention she'd have caught it. They didn't say to not talk on your phone while driving just for the hell of it.

It wasn't just the car smashing into a light pole, it was the part where another car rammed into her—intentionally—to keep her from recovering, that was when she'd lost consciousness.

And now here she was, in the back of some car, bound and gagged like a pig being put to roast, covered in someone else's blood and her own, waiting for 'it' to happen. It didn't matter. It didn't. Because they wouldn't get their hands on her daughter. The whole lot of them could do what they pleased—it didn't matter.

The back hatch opened and blinding light spilled through. A large, rough hand reached in, grabbing her blouse and lifting her out by that. Looking down the black corridor that opened up in the underground lot, she knew that it was time to resign from Torchwood. Finding yourself in the place Torchwood sent people to 'disappear' was pretty much the writing on the wall, as far as that went.

She'd started here idealistic, hoping to save and protect this world as she and the Doctor had done for her last. But things had just grown more and more complicated as the years had gone by. Seventeen of them, which seemed like so long ago, and only yesterday, all at the same time.

The world-protecting thing had worked itself out. They'd not been enslaved or destroyed yet. But when she was twenty and full of ideals, she hadn't exactly imagined that her family would be protecting this world FROM Torchwood. Pete had helped build the place. It was insane to think that it had become something else entirely in all of these years.

But maybe she'd helped with that. She'd given them a taste of something, giving them access to Violet, and they had gotten greedy—they wanted more. And Rose'd just let that slip right through their fingertips. Torchwood probably thought they were doing the right thing for this Earth—were probably certain of that.

That was what made them so dangerous.

Rose was shoved—nearly propelled down the corridor, toward a dark door that slid back. She was thrust inside. When she hit the ground, the door slid closed behind her, and she tried to look around the ill-lit space to get her bearings.

It was then that Rose realized that while Torchwood may be done with her professionally, they still needed something out of her. This meant that even if they had all the chips, she still had leverage—she just needed to find out what that was. They were trying to force her cooperation. It's why Jackie Tyler was lying unconscious at the other end of the cell. "Mum?"

XYZ

From a few feet behind, arms crossed over his chest, Jack watched the girl push a piece of paper to the sales clerk behind the counter. Nerdy looking guy with greasy hair, a short-sleeved white shirt and a novelty tie. Kid looked like he didn't get out much. His eyes lit up when he read her list of specifications. "I—I don't know that we have all of this in stock."

Violet told him to give her the closest match—she didn't care about compatibility—she'd make it work; price was no object.

And that was it, Jack decided. The kid behind the counter was in hopeless love. He said he'd need manager approval for a purchase this big, but he'd get a manager and be back with the parts.

Watching him trundle off, through the aisles of software and hardware, to the back room, Jack shifted on his heels. "We have computers at the office."

Shaking her head, the girl tapped her fingers against the glass counter listlessly. "I'll not have myself ingratiated to Torchwood any more than necessary."

He'd spent the last, oh, twelve hours trying to get on her good side, and it hadn't been entirely without fruit so far. That was why he wasn't pushing the equipment issue. If she wanted to reinvent the wheel with a bunch of commercial stuff that wasn't as good as what Torchwood had…then he would let her. He still didn't know what she was up to, anyway. "Look at it this way," Jack stated as pleasantly as possible. "You're not giving up any information about the Doctor because you obviously care about him, and I died for him, so I think we're probably on the same side."

When she didn't immediately protest, Jack suspected he'd touched just the right spot. "I guess. I just…want to do this on my own." Before Jack could point out how necessary he was at this point, she held up a finger. "The fact that I need a 'responsible adult' is irrelevant."

It wasn't, entirely. But it made Jack grin. She'd have been fun to travel with. He could see why the Doctor kept her around. That, and if she really was from another dimension, she probably didn't have anyone here. He leaned on the counter, getting a little closer to eye level with her. "So. What does your mother do, at this other Torchwood?" They'd have to work up to that.

She shrugged. "Little bit of everything. Paperwork, negotiation, stopping the occasional invasion. Keeping Torchwood from blowing another hole in the universe. I guess they still haven't figured out that destroying reality is bad. They're bureaucratic and slow like that." Pulling out her phone, she checked it again. Getting ready to ring her mum one more time, she saw something blinking. "I have a message…"

Listening to it, the hopeful smile on her face turned to… "Oh friggin' bloody hell crap hell."

A unique string of expletives for a unique girl, Jack supposed. She was already dialing another number. "What?"

A somewhat fake but largely hopeful smile spread across her features. "Hi. Yeah. Sorry about that…" There was a really long pause. Someone was giving her a thorough ear chewing on the other end. She gave a nervous laugh. "Haha. Yeah. I'm, uh, buying computer parts. You got me—you were right—I should have gotten one before. Sorry I didn't meet you. Funny story… Turns out the Time Agent traveled with the Doctor. Yeah. Who'da thunk?"

She tucked frazzled hair behind her ears, reminding him of Rose in that instance. It was probably the insufferable cuteness. Rose had similar super-human powers that she'd turn on when she wanted something. Women. "I'm mostly sure it's mostly not a trap." Giving Jack an innocent smile, she turned away. "Your roommate's gone for the weekend, right? I need some room to set up some things…" Seeing the kid and the manager coming back to the counter, she wrapped it up. "You are my favorite person, ever. And I'll bring back a something awesome. Sorry for worrying you."

Jack could tell she really liked the kid. The kid, in return, was probably not biting—potentially even oblivious. It was kind of painful to watch the young and innocent flirt hopelessly. He'd probably have to teach her the subtle art of… well, subtlety—that was, if their acquaintanceship continued.

Jack helped smooth things over with the manager regarding payment—apparently there was doubt that the girl could pay for everything she wanted. When it came time to question exactly what a sixteen year old was going to do with all of these parts, he also did his best to dissuade the man from pursuing his curiosity.

It took twenty more minutes than he wanted to spend to get out the door after that. Delivery was promised within two hours—the right amount of money had the ability to do that. Over the course of those two hours, somehow Jack ended up carrying four bags from four different shops, Violet holding up her only mostly-healed left arm in excuse.

The part that irritated Jack the most was that he still didn't know what all these things were for, and he'd been dragged out of the flat with the anticipation of learning about 'Bad Wolf,' and they still hadn't gotten to either.

When the campus was once again in sight, Jack looked into one of the bags. "What's the vodka for?" He'd gotten her to hold off on some of the things she'd wanted—like the radioactive materials—until after her calculations were complete. There were some things that were non-returnable. On the other hand—he knew why she needed an adult for some of these things.

Violet looked up from the itchy scab she'd been poking on her forearm. "Coolant."

Jack nodded. "Ah. I should have guessed. What about the wine?"

"Peace offering."

Nodding, he asked, "Not to…help the creative juices get flowing?"

A somewhat manic smile spread across her face. "I have a lot of numbers to crunch. Never drink and derive."

Made perfect sense. "Alright. So that stuff should be delivered soon—if it isn't there already. And you still haven't told me about Bad Wolf."

The girl's cheeks grew red, and he knew she hadn't really been intending to tell him. Looking up at the sky, she studied the cheerful, fluffy white clouds set against a sky as blue as her shirt. "All kinds of things."

Great. Nothing vague about that. "What kinds of things?"

She stopped walking and turned to him. "Time. Space. The Vortex, the heart of a TARDIS… a person." Her arms folded over her chest, tucked under her arms. She was possibly more like the Doctor than she knew. "Not an easy answer. Sorry."

What did the Bad Wolf have to do with Satellite Five, and the Daleks? It had been everywhere, following the Doctor before Jack had ever come across him. He couldn't ask it like that, though. "And how did the Bad Wolf send a TARDIS through this… Void?" Make her answer questions about herself, before questions about him.

Arms still folded, she started walking again. "I was…maybe five when this TARDIS started talking to me. Just out of the clear blue. All kinds of stuff—bits of Gallifreyan fairy tales, bits of history…warnings…It told me the Bad Wolf would send me away. I had no idea what it meant. Couple years later this…thing comes. And I guess it would have gotten me, if it wasn't for the Bad Wolf. And if it woulda gotten me, it would have been able to do a lot more damage. So…I guess the Bad Wolf is a good thing." Smiling, she at least grabbed the door for him. "And that, Jack Harkness—Captain Jack—sounds like something you'd call a dirty old uncle… is about all that I can say."

Shoulder against the second door, Jack somehow managed to get through with all four bags. It was something. The metaphysical nature of the Bad Wolf. He just didn't know what to do with that information.

This was forcing Jack to be far more patient than he wanted to be—almost more patient than he thought he was capable of. He had six floors worth of steps to ponder this. Anyone ever heard of an elevator in this place?

"Lifts are only for moving in and out," Violet told him, putting that question to rest. It made him wonder just how psychic she was.

XYZ

The room was about six feet wide, maybe ten feet deep, if Rose had to venture a guess. It smelled faintly of jet fuel, which wasn't encouraging. The air hung cold, humid and unmoving, making it like coagulating blood when illuminated only by the red light atop the security camera.

Her assets list was very small—the heels on her shoes weren't drastic enough to do any damage. The camera needed to be disabled anyway, if any attempt at escape was feasible—its contents should also be considered. They'd taken her jewelry, her stockings may be enough to strangle a man with, if given the chance. It wasn't her style, but no one was coming to rescue her. She had to at least entertain the possibility that at some point drastic measures would need to be taken. It wasn't so much for her own sake, but for her mother's.

Jackie was awake, but not saying much. She was cold, huddling against the wall in a dressing gown and night dress, her bare feet wrapped in Rose's black suit jacket. They'd been here, Rose judged, maybe four hours. Her watch had been taken from her; they wanted their captives to lose sense of time. Rose just had to tell herself that it didn't matter. She'd wait as long as they wanted her to wait, before they made their next move.

Perhaps Pete and Mickey would figure out that the second Dalek report was a ruse, and would come back for her? Of course, it's possible the second Dalek wasn't a fabrication—just really good timing. It was tough to pull one over on a Tyler—but a whole slew of them—there had to have been some marginal level of orchestration in all of this.

Walking the length of the cell in an endless rhythmic pattern, Rose rubbed her arms, her blood-spattered silk blouse not enough to keep out the chill that was steadily increasing in the room. The humidity in the air made it all the more miserable as it condensed on the cement walls.

When she approached the back wall for the thirty-billionth time in her unending trek, the cell door opened. She spun around to see two shadowy figures in the doorway. A pair of handcuffs were thrown at her feet. "We have something we wish for you to see."

Jackie got to her feet. "What do you people want?"

Rose held a hand out to her mother. "It's ok, mum." Picking up the cuffs, she slowly secured one wrist, leaving it as loose as she dared, then secured the other. One shadowy figure gestured for her to come forward, and he grabbed her wrists, tightening the cuffs to an uncomfortable level.

As soon as she was out of the pathetic excuse for a cell, the door clanked closed behind her, muffling her mother's protests. She was lead to a door in the middle of the hall way. Everything was painted black, so she had missed it the first time around. It opened, and she was pushed roughly through the threshold, the metal clacking closed, her captors on the other side of the door. She stared at it a moment, wondering what was supposed to happen.

The room was ill lit, though slightly warmer and lacking the distinct odor of petroleum. It did, however, have the feint tinge of fresh blood. As she turned around to survey the room, she saw the only thing illuminating the open space: the soft white glow of the words "POLICE BOX."

TBC…


	8. Chapter 8

Standard disclaimers, you know the drill. Thanks to Rosesbud for the beta help with all my isms and all of my words missing letters.

XYZ

Fade To Black

Chapter 8

XYZ

Greg relocated with the remainder of the wine bottle to the floor at the foot of his bed. First he'd been usurped from his spot at his desk, now his bed had been commandeered. "You'd better have this cleaned up by Monday. My roommate's a neat-freak of monumental proportions."

The server was on the floor next to the bed, but all the 'add-ons' were strewn across the bed—fiber optic cables, more boards than would fit in the box, a mini deep-freeze, and several pieces of copper piping, which were running into the hole where one of the fans had been kicked out. His desk was overtaken by three monitors, all glowing a weird blue.

Jack had a rather long bit of cabling and was sitting against the closet door, hardwiring it into his wrist computer while Violet tinkered, trying to make the box not explode…what with separate power cables going from the box to every outlet in the room that they were certain ran to a different fuse box.

Finishing the patch, Jack handed her the wrist computer, then took the bottle from Greg. "Seriously—this is far more fun with alcohol," he told her. "You should try."

Cutting on the computer, Violet shook her head, a bit distracted. "Mum made me promise I wouldn't hit the bottle till I was eighteen at least." She frowned, some sort of thought process coming to a conclusion. "I think I'm a drunken fling baby."

Wine shot out of Greg's nose. "Warn me!" He didn't even need to complete the thought. It was a problem he'd developed over the last year. "Because when you say that, the only thing I can think about…"

Violet rolled her eyes. "Don't say it."

"Barcelona Springs! Imported bottled water. He slapped that bottle out of your hand so hard you'd think it was poison! 'Whatever you do, don't drink the water!'" Greg shouted, doing his best impression of the Doctor.

The monitors flickered as the operating data from Jack's computer was transferred—she needed a slightly better operating system than was currently available on Earth. The lack of Gallifreyan language support was something she'd deal with momentarily, granted Jack had only disabled the sonic staple remover, and not destroyed the poor thing.

Jack held up the bottle, humor lighting up his eyes. "NOBODY finds out the water is intoxicating till they end up naked on the beach, running for their lives from aliens with pitchforks and angry husbands with twelve-inch teeth. Maybe that was just me. I swear, I didn't know she was married! And I swear, I thought the girl was her sister, not her daughter. That's not the point. Nobody ever checks first!"

Violet turned a furious state of pink. "Can we PLEASE not talk about Barcelona ANYTHING?"

Kicking Greg's leg, Jack passed back the bottle. "She's blushing. It's cute. Everything about her is cute. You just wanna pinch her little cheeks…"

"PEOPLE," the girl huffed. "Why don't you just open the second bottle, and leave me in peace?"

Holding the bottle upside down above his head, Greg closed one eye, looking up the neck, at the empty innards. "We opened that a while ago. We've run dry."

A second later, Violet's black credit card came flying at him. "Go fix it. Or pick up some food, or something. Just… give me a few minutes in peace. I'm never going to punch a hole in reality if you don't shut it."

And with that, both men scurried out, tails appropriately between legs. Outside, Greg pointed in the direction of the student centre, one of the few buildings on campus that had been built in the current century. It wasn't cheap booze, but it was close. "Talk about cranky when she's programming."

Hands shoved into his pockets, Jack smirked. "Must be the species. One time I asked the Doctor if he wanted tea, and he threatened to drop me an' Rose out into the Vortex if we didn't just let him reprogram the time displays."

Not having anything in his mouth, the only socially unacceptable thing Greg managed was a snort. "Must not interrupt the almighty Time Lord train of though!"

Jack had to slap the kid on the back. The poor boy was clueless, but he was good company. He may also be a back door to a few answers. "High strung. So how's a kid like you end up with those two?"

Opening the glass door, Greg shrugged. "I was supposed to go backpacking with some friends, missed my train, was assaulted by the actual blood-sucking aliens you hear tell about, and then they decided that since my break was ruined, the only thing that'd make it right is if I went off to see the universe. Rather ingenious kidnapping scheme, if you think about it."

Standing in line, Jack went so far as to ask the young man what he'd thought of his time with them.

Greg thought about it for a moment. "Fantastic, it goes without saying. They seemed to have left out of the original offer just how much 'trouble' is involved. The Doctor and I had a lot of good talks, late at night though. She doesn't want to be anything other than human and normal—but she wants normal to always involve running from something. They've been working together for so long, it's sometimes hard to stay on the same page, except for all the stuff that Violet's convinced the Doctor is dead wrong on." The kid sighed. "They stick together, though. I know they both miss her mum."

The kid was probably happy to get back to the every-day. That life just wasn't for him… "Wait, they both miss her mum?"

Looking away, Greg stepped up to the counter. "Forget I said anything. I mean—I shouldn't be--" Turning to the girl behind the counter, he put his full attention into beer.

Jack was a man with secrets, he could appreciate that the girl had some. But oh how aggravating. Every opportunity, he was thwarted. Something wiggled its way to the forefront of his mind—he had suspected what Violet's little 'something stupid' project was about, but now he was pretty certain what it was all for. He left it go, however, and the two walked back to the room in silence.

Hell of a way to spend another Saturday, Jack noted.

XYZ

Rose's heart sunk to her stomach, seeing the police box. They'd succeeded. Torchwood had wanted to pull matter through the Void, and they'd done it. They'd done it and they'd caught the prize fish. But they didn't have her daughter.

The room wasn't excessively large, but it was tall, possibly fifteen feet. It made her feel as though she were trapped in a cube.

A florescent light flickered on above her head, filling the space with a harsh bluish light. "Miss Tyler, if you be so kind as to join us…"

Rose followed the voice, moving around the faux weathered wood exterior of the blue box, her cuffed hands reaching out to brush the coarse paint, as if that would somehow anchor her to something real. She wasn't sure how things had spiraled into madness so quickly, or why it had taken almost a decade. A minute and a lifetime, all in one gulp of air, making her choke on the tangled mess her life had become.

She almost couldn't bring herself to look at first, but eventually she had to drag her gaze from the floor to the body chained to the heavy metal chair twenty feet behind the TARDIS.

Ignoring the men behind him, their faces hidden in shadows, her eyes locked on his, a shiver running through her. "Hello, Rose. Long time no see. How're things?"

It was impossible for not to crack a smile. Her Doctor, the same as he ever was. Bruised and bloodied, the side of his face quite swollen, But he must not have been too terribly damaged—the jovial tone in his voice didn't sound forced—which was a twinge she also recognized, when it crept in.

Holding up a hand, she continued to ignore the men behind him. They would keep. Maybe she could also buy some time, one of them could think up a plan. Certainly Torchwood had to know how dangerous it was to have both of them in the same room at the same time?

Of course, who knew how much they underestimated her, and him, and the lengths they'd go to for Violet? "Alright, you know how it goes. Mickey and Pete're on a wild goose chase, or wild Dalek chase, as the case may be. They've also occupied Jake off-world, so our chances of rescue lay somewhere between zero and nil, roughly. They've got mum, they've got you, and your ship—congratulations on that one—splendid job. Really." She kept it casual, trying to see how long their jailers would tolerate the banter.

The Doctor shrugged, the movement exposing torn flesh on his shoulder and causing him to wince. "Oh you know how it is. I try to keep reality from splitting, these clowns decide to use that as an opportunity to pull my poor defenseless ship though the Void. I can't even tell you how much energy that must have taken."

With an exaggerated nod, Rose ventured taking another step closer. It was then that she saw the table along the back wall, and the implements spread there—these men weren't jailers—they were torturers. "What about you, then? Torchwood's accommodations up to your satisfaction?"

Struggling superficially against the bonds, the Doctor gestured over his shoulder at his 'friends,' rolling his eyes. "Oh sure, you know. We've skipped a few steps in the torturing process, and they went straight to the cigarette burns. Been a while for that. But these gentlemen seem to be under the mistaken impression that Violet is in that ship. They would like for me to open it up. Which I can't do, due to an…incident with the key."

"Oh lord. You didn't? You did."

He gave a cheeky grin. "Learned from the best. Stepped out of the ship, swallowed my key. They can gut me, I suppose. Whoops, don't want to give them ideas. But the TARDIS is not in a happy mood right now. She might fry them, out of spite."

One of the men began slowly approaching. Rose backed away, until she slammed into the TARDIS.

"Don't make this more difficult than it has to be," a disembodied voice rung out. "We could make this very simple, indeed."

As the shadowy figure's fingers closed around her throat, she wondered just who this would be simple for.

XYZ

Back in the room, the monitors were glowing with circles and other shapes. Obviously the 'upgrade' had been successful. The technician in charge, however, did not seem to notice. Violet was asleep, sitting on the floor propped up against the server, the wireless keyboard in her lap.

Greg pushed the hair out of her face with gentle fingers—the young man did care about her, Jack could see—just probably not in the way the girl wished he would. "Should we wake her?"

Picking up his wrist computer, Jack disconnected it from the server. "Maybe not. Somebody's not as healed as she'd like us to think."

Frowning, Greg sat on the server, propping his feet up on the case of beer. "She does have the whole martyrdom complex going for her. They both do. I just thought it was Time Lord genetics."

Just when Jack was about to say that it had been fun, but if she was going to be unconscious and stuff, he had things to do at the office—her phone began vibrating on the desk. It rumbled across the faux wood surface and nearly over the edge, before Jack reached over and caught it.

He was about to answer when Violet suddenly lunged for it, falling over Greg's legs and into Jack.

"It's mum…" She grabbed the mobile out of his hand, pressing the button to accept the call before she'd even hit the floor again. "Mum? Are you ok? I heard--"

Face gone white, the girl slid her legs around and slowly got up. "If you hurt--" suddenly she stopped, her jaw clenched. "I can't." Swallowing, she stepped around Greg, walking over to the window. "I can't because I'm not in the TARDIS, you idiot! If you hurt her because of something they have no control over—trace the signal! It's passing into the Void! No! You're seeing it like that because the TARDIS is the relay. God. You people are stupid. You're stupid, primitive little apes who're mucking with things you really ought not, and if you hurt either of them, your building is going to be a very large hole in the ground by nightfall." The last was said with complete evenness and serenity, and then she snapped the phone closed.

Taking a few breaths to compose herself, she turned back to the room. "They have my mum, and the Doctor. And my gran. They think I'm in the TARDIS, and they're threatening them, to get me out. They're so stupid." Sitting down at the computer, she squeezed Greg's arm. "You're not stupid. Human's aren't stupid… just… the stupid ones." She sighed. "God. I never thought I'd say that."

By the look on her face, Jack could tell she was struggling with it. If his conversation with the young man had been accurate, it was possibly the first time she was owning up to being anything other than human. "What do you need me to do to help?"

The appreciation in her eyes told him just how frightened she was for her mother. "I have a list…" digging it out of her back pocket, she handed it to him. "Soon as I have the calculations, I can start putting this together, I guess. Mostly I need to work on opening the Rift and pushing through to the Void, instead of just some other point in the universe, and I have to chart a path through the Void that doesn't leave us open to anything falling out on this side that shouldn't…" Blowing out a steadying breath, she turned back to the computer and began typing, the strange characters appearing and evolving. "I need… there to be two of me…"

Jack flipped the paper over, looking at the rough sketch of the plans. "I can have this together in two hours, completely built."

She looked up at him, her eyes glazed over. "But part of this--"

He held up the paper. "Is bastardized, make-shift Time Lord technology. I know, I get it. And I once rigged a cosmic surf board to a TARDIS. I think I can handle this…cappuccino machine you've designed here." The girl nodded, and he looked over the lined spiral notebook paper again. "I also have a resident techno-wizard who'll make a great second set of hands on this, in addition to having some of these actual parts, instead of cobbled-together bits like you've got listed here, if you don't use my resources to help. I know it's tough to swallow, but Torchwood isn't your enemy. Not here, at least. London office is gone. Reduced the amount of stupidity by approximately ninety-nine percent. Let us at least help you fight the real battle."

Not sure what else to say, she simply bobbed her head again in ascent. "Tha-thanks."

Jack made for the door before she could protest. "Lemme make a few phone calls, get this started. Then we get there, save your family, put parallel Torchwood out of business, and I get to ask the Doctor about my little predicament." He turned to Greg, who was looking around in want of something to do. "Get her something to eat. She doesn't need to be passing out again."

The young man nodded. "What do you want?"

"Peanut butter and ham sandwich," she replied absently, lost in her calculations again.

Making a face of disgust, Jack closed the door behind him. Yup, definitely alien. Only an alien could ask for that and still stomach it afterwards.

TBC…


	9. Chapter 9

Standard disclaimers apply. Thanks to Rosesbud for the beta help.

XYZ

Fade To Black

Chapter Nine

XYZ

Violet was fine, up until Greg pushed the sandwich in front of her. Single mindedness of purpose was easy to maintain, so long as nothing entered her periphery. But all it took was one ham sandwich to dissolve her nerve and set her mind aflood with the possibilities—all the ways this might not work. All the ways she could be too little or too late.

The Doctor had told her ages ago that letting thoughts like that go on would cripple, so the best thing was to not let them start, but if they did, to squash them as soon as possible.

Staring at the ham and drippy all-natural peanut butter sandwich, she suddenly couldn't breathe. It was glaring back at her from the plain brown napkin, the porous white bread seemed to be explaining to her all the ways that she could fail, throwing new possibilities at her that she hadn't even imagined yet. She shook her head, forcing herself to pry her weary and burning eyes away from the food and look up at her friend. "Uh… Thanks. I think," she managed, her mouth cottony and dry.

Greg sat on the server, leaning in her direction. "How's it coming?"

Picking up the sandwich, Violet tried to force a bite, but eventually put it down. She didn't know why she had no stomach for food lately. "I don't know. I mean, the calculations are fine, they just take time. Not having to do it by hand is helping. It's just—God. What do I think I'm doing? I'm going to crack a code that the Doctor hasn't managed in seventeen years. Then what? I get through the Void, presumably without getting knocked off course or trapped, and make it to the other side. Into the lion's den. That's the Doctor. That's my mum. If they're in trouble, either they can get out on their own, in which case I'm walking into a trap for nothing, or they can't get out on their own, in which case, what chance do I have?" Logic peppered with self-doubt. Never a good thing.

Squeezing her shoulders, Greg looked over the unreadable characters, attempting to judge her progress. "You don't have to do this alone. I'm here. I think that I can muster up the nerve for one last adventure for the Doctor, and for your mum. And… Captain Jack said he'd help. I get the feeling he's a tough old bear, he should be able to handle a rescue mission." A thought wiggled its way to the front of his mind, from his recent conversation with the Torchwood agent. "I think he'd like to go—if only to see your mum again."

Violet pulled away from him abruptly, turning around to glare. "What?" So much for being mostly sure it mostly wasn't a trap.

Greg shrugged innocently. "He mentioned her name when we were talking. Said the Doctor threatened to toss them both into the Vortex one time when he was annoyed. He seemed to look back on it—and her—fondly. The point is—what I'm trying to say is—you're not alone. We both have a stake in this on your behalf. So don't act like you're alone in this world."

Nodding, Violet tried to remind herself to keep breathing. "I—you know you can't come with me. I can't guarantee that I can get you home. This formula might be one-way. I—I couldn't live with myself if I stuck you somewhere. I don't think your parents would be very happy either."

The young man nodded, running a hand through his thick, overgrown hair. "We'll see, when the time comes. But Jack doesn't have any similar hang-ups." Standing, he wrapped an arm around her, kissing the girl's forehead. "And anyways—for you and for them, I'd take the chance, ok?"

The round brown eyes looking up with him in such gratitude nearly broke his heart. With a sigh, he slowly pulled away, letting his hand linger on the back of her neck until the last moment. The part that really did hurt him was that, ultimately—she was alone. Humans were fragile and died easily or too soon. Maybe that's why she had always lived in such vehement denial about who and what she really was; if she did deal with it, she'd have to deal with her own immortality.

Sitting on the server again, he pulled his legs under himself, wondering just where to go from there. Really—there wasn't much for him to do to help. "Eat your sandwich, then you can go back to navigating the rift and the Void."

XYZ

Rose looked… like hell. The Doctor had to just be honest about that. He was sure he wasn't a prize himself at the moment—his favorite jacket was ruined and he had certainly bled through his shirt by now. But Rose…she looked tired and worried. Not to mention the dried blood caking on her face and staining her silk blouse. The dark circles under her eyes were a testament to both time and the seriousness of their current situation.

When Curley (he'd had several hours to think up clever little names for his torturers) slammed his forearm into Rose's collar bone, forcing her up against the TARDIS, the Doctor struggled in what he recognized to be futility against his bonds, hoping to at least remove some of the attention from Rose and place it back onto himself. "You know, if the girl IS in the ship—and I'm not saying she is, hurting her mother is not the smartest way to encourage cooperation. However, it is the quickest way to get her to kick your--"

Moe's hand slammed into the back of his head, whipping his skull forward. Only the rope across his chest kept him from falling off the chair completely. "Enough. If she doesn't value your life—and it would stand to reason that she doesn't—you have so many—perhaps the life of a mere mortal will persuade her."

Rose tried to take a swipe at the man, and had her head bounced of the exterior of the TARDIS for her trouble. The man would be in a world of trouble, just as soon as they were in a position to effect an escape—not from the Doctor—he was going to let Rose take care of this one himself.

Taking out her mobile phone with his free hand, the man dialed. It rang for an impossibly long time, then someone picked up. Regrettably, he was going to have to let Violet handle this one on her own. There had been nothing he'd been able to say, up to this point, to convince them that she wasn't in that ship.

Of course, it was a testament to just how not-bright Torchwood could be—if Violet was here, she'd have no doubt gotten him out of this by now. He blamed it on their single-minded determination. If they were capable of thinking beyond their immediate goals and the perceived gains of getting the girl back, then they would be able to see it for themselves. It also probably didn't help that they were at odds with some of their bigger movers and shakers.

"Listen," the man ground out, his stubbled jaw locking for a moment. "We have the Doctor. We have your mother. The Doctor is already in a world of hurt, and I don't think your mother will fair quite as well, if we start in on her." His voice was calm, calculated. He thought he was being so reasonable, the Doctor suspected. "Your grandmother is being held on reserve. If you care about them, you'll come out of the ship."

He had no idea what Violet said in response, but he could hear her hollering on the other end. There wasn't any way to convince these people—they'd come so far and gone to such great lengths to pull his ship into this reality—it was impossible for them to imagine that she could just…not be with him. Good old element of surprise.

"We have traced it. The signal ends at the ship. You have an hour." There was a long pause, and then the man slid the phone into his coat pocket. "Which means that's how long YOU have," he told Rose quietly, his mouth next to her cheek in a way that made the Doctor very, very angry.

XYZ

Greg arranged delivery of the necessary equipment, working it all out over mobile phones while Violet finished the calculations. She'd found a way for pushing matter into the Void, but was having trouble navigating a path through. "I might need to just figure this out once I get in there," she said hesitantly, watching the characters change shape and form on one of the monitors. "There might not be a way to chart a clear line through. That might be where the other Torchwood ran into trouble."

She blew out a breath through pursed lips. "I've got seven minutes till they call again. I'm not done, and I only have seven minutes…"

Without thinking, Greg snatched the red and silver flip phone from the desk. "I'll stall. Captain Jack said two hours, but I just spoke to a…Toshiko? I think that was her name. She said they've got the bulk of it done already and they're crating it up. She's going to make sure we have enough power, too, so I think they're supplying a generator of some sort." He realized she wasn't paying him a bit of attention, so he decided to go the slightly more drastic route. Grabbing her shoulder, he forced her to turn around, and got within a few inches of her. "Listen to me. I'm going to stall them. Maybe hearing another voice will… I don't know. Make them rethink. You can't just… wing it once you get into the Void. Can you?" He didn't think so. There was some truly frightening stuff in there. What if she didn't find the safe path through?

The girl licked her dry lips, still concentrating on the numbers. "I may have to."

She really wasn't looking all that well, still. He'd gotten her to take a few bites of the sandwich at least. That was the problem—as soon as she got distracted or upset, the sleep and the eating went right out the window. It was like she couldn't even fake being human any more when she got to that point. But if she didn't eat something and maybe get another rest, she wasn't going to finish healing. He didn't know much about Time Lord anatomy and physiology, but you couldn't engage in the busy work of healing if you were low on fuel.

She didn't have time for a nap. "How's about you finish the sandwich. Maybe take a minute and think at me. Thinking out loud helps." It was quite possibly the only reason why they'd kept him around for a whole year—someone to spout out crazy theories to while their minds wrapped around complex problems he didn't even bother trying to understand.

He watched her take another bite, barely keeping herself together. "I don't understand why I can't mathematically find the path Torchwood used to pull the ship through the Void. It had to have left a trail, but I can't find it. Otherwise, I could follow that trail." One more bite, and she munched thoughtfully, licking peanut butter off of her thumb. "Of course… we were never able to find the trail the Bad Wolf made when she pushed me through the Void… Oh hell. What if I need a TARDIS to do this? I shouldn't, right? Uncle Mickey and my grandfather were able to get here, once, without a ship. But the tear between the two realities was so deep they were practically melting together by then…"

Her breathing was getting erratic, and he knew she was panicking. Looking around the room, trying to think of some way to get her mind back on the problem… he finally did the only thing he could think of—he slapped her on the cheek. "Violet—you can solve this problem. The reason why it wasn't solvable before is because it wasn't ready to be solved. Circumstances are different now." He had no idea if it was true, but the longer this went on, the less sure she was of herself. "Look at me. You're a Time Lady, right? You have command over the five dimensions. You can handle time, you can handle space, and you can handle the absence of both in the Void. Got it?"

A few more deep breaths and she seemed calmer. He was a master bullshitter, if that had worked. Or maybe he wasn't such a stupid 'mere human' as he'd been thinking this whole last year.

She grabbed his hand, squeezing it. "I'm not a Time Lady yet. I think there're some exams you have to pass first." A tiny smile pulled back on her lips, though. "I guess this is like everything else in my education, though. Trial by fire. Final examination by Void."

Wrapping his arms around her, he squeezed until he was sure he felt something pop. "Good girl. Now, I have a phone call to take and a 'cosmic cappuccino machine' to receive. You have a Void to chart. No more doubts, right?"

Something sad played behind her eyes, but she nodded. "No more doubts, no more cramming. Final exam. If I haven't learned it thus far—it's hopeless. I'm either going to save them, or I'm not."

XYZ

"And you just…walked right out of the ship?" Rose asked, tugging on her bonds, arms strained painfully behind her back. She was now tied up in another oversized metal chair, facing his. "Walked right out, and said, let me guess, 'hello, I'm the Doctor' am I right?"

His eyes were following their captors around the small space, gaze darting from one to the other. "Well, what was I supposed to do?"

Rose rolled her eyes. "Not get captured?"

The Doctor grinned. "This is ME you're talking to."

With a sigh, Rose relaxed against the bonds a bit. "Right. So. Who's going to rescue us?"

In thought, the Doctor's head lulled back and forth. "I'm holding out for Mickey. Which tells you about my desperate plight. I'd probably have better odds of your mother freeing herself and using her deranged lumberjack skills to chop down this door with a fire axe and take out our assailants with ninja fu." He looked around again at the space—nothing other than the implements of 'information extraction' at their disposal. "Have I covered everything?"

Rose had managed to slide her hand, up to the knuckle in her thumb, around in the metal cuffs that had been re-secured behind her. If she could get a hand out, she'd still have to somehow discretely wriggle free of the bungee cord wrapped around her. "No, I think that's everything. You've fully encompassed our complete and utter doomed-ness. And if it's alright with you, if we die, I'm going to blame you. Since you stepped out of the ship and all with nothing resembling a plan, or backup." She'd learned how to run her mouth from the best.

Another shrug and a wince from the Doctor, and she could see that he was also discretely working on freeing himself. "Whatever floats your boat, Rose Tyler. Whatever makes you happy, melts the margarine on your sticky bun, finishes your crossword puzzles… No wait, that isn't an analogy for contentment with the world…"

One thing bothered Rose. Why an hour? Why not just kill her? "Not that I'm complaining or anything," she started, twisting herself back and forth, trying to disguise her efforts to get her hand through the cuff. These people didn't play games, and it was certainly going to hurt when she ripped her hand through (she was quite attached to those layers of skin, thanks), but she wanted to make as much room as possible for herself. "Why give her an hour? I mean if she was in the ship—and she's not—that'd be more than enough time for her clever little brain to think up something magnificent. I mean, she is my child."

Rose gave a winning grin oozing with bravado. The man with the severe military-style hair cut grabbed the back of her neck. Her hand froze and she prayed he wouldn't notice her progress with the cuffs. The gloved hand squeeze the tendons along the sides of her jaw and he leaned in, his hot breath hitting her neck just below the hair tucked behind her ear. "You don't actually need to be conscious when we do this."

It was only two men. They could do this… if they could just get a break. Then it was smooth sailing to the TARDIS. Granted the Doctor didn't ACTUALLY swallow the key. If that was the case, their doomed-ness was vast.

The man who liked to get in Rose's face before whispering menacingly pulled out the phone again. "Perhaps you would care to reason with her."

She scowled at him. "Perhaps you'd like to go hell. No really. Why an hour?"

A second later, his hot breath was on her neck again, and the Doctor was looking away, his face screwed in angry concentration. "Wouldn't you just like to know."

The Doctor spoke up suddenly. "Actually, yes I would."

The man smiled, and Rose was tempted to spit in his face. "Then lets find out." Without looking, he pressed a button on the phone, setting it dialing again. "The results will be… magnificent."

It was then that Rose figured it out—they probably knew she wasn't in the ship. Or had a contingency. They knew Violet was the bridge between the worlds. They knew that, given the right circumstances, she'd find her own way here.

And knowing her daughter as she did, Rose was filled with dread. If it was possible—she'd find a way. And even if it wasn't possible—well, the Doctor liked to do seven impossible things before breakfast. Even if she only managed two or three, they were all in a world of trouble.

Rose tugged, visibly this time, on her bonds. "I will kill you if you harm her," she said coolly. She'd figured it out; this wasn't a game and it wasn't a puzzle—it was war, and she'd do what she had to.

Her eyes met the Doctor's. He didn't have the same deadly seriousness lingering in those windows to his soul—just understanding. If it came to it—he wouldn't stop her. It would be her call. They just knew each other like that.

She was a mother, and it killed her—broke her heart into a million pieces. Damn Torchwood, damn them for setting up this trap. But damn her for walking right into it. Damn her for not figuring it out sooner.

Someone picked up on the other side. The man stood up straight, a tight smile of satisfaction playing across his face. "Your hour is up."

Breath catching in her chest, Rose looked away.

TBC...


	10. Chapter 10

Standard disclaimers apply. One more story after this, kids. So many thanks to Rosesbud who has not annoyed me with all of her corrections : ) Stuff, stuff and more stuff… oh well. On with the show.

XYZ

Fade To Black

Chapter Ten

XYZ

Greg had an idea. He was good for them now and again. This had better work, though, because he'd officially used up his clever idea for the week, and he'd be in a sorry state if this didn't work itself out.

After another small pep talk, he left Violet to her numbers and figures. She'd told him once that most problems were solved by either mathematics or luck. He wasn't sure just how much he bought into that, but she seemed convinced. If she couldn't figure it out with numbers, he just hoped luck was on her side.

If he wasn't there, maybe she'd be a tad more inclined to focus, he hoped. Also, she wouldn't be thrown into a panic again when the call rang through. He dashed out of the building, across the campus lawn, and to the nearest fairly busy street. As soon as he got to the corner, it began vibrating in his hand.

Looking out into the junction, he watched an ugly green VW Beetle turn the corner on a flat tyre, the steel rim thudding against the tarmac every revolution. It continued on, the owner apparently trying to limp the thing to a garage. If he drove much further like that, he'd have to replace the wheel too, Greg noted absently, then accepted the call.

"Your hour's up."

He turned the phone towards the traffic slightly, so the party on the other end would hear some distinctly un-TARDIS-like sounds. "Violet's phone." Attempting to convince the inconvincible seemed like a good a plan as any.

He'd expected the man on the other end to sound annoyed, but there was some strange satisfaction in his tone. "Put her on."

Greg began walking further up the street, away from the residence halls. "I'll have ta walk back to her room. I grabbed her phone by mistake. Anything I can help you with?" Ignorance wasn't always feigned with him, but he put on his best clueless voice.

XYZ

The door was unlocked, which didn't seem all that secure, considering the secrecy of the operation—they were trying to create a controlled opening in the rift in a dormitory, but Gwen was a bit grateful for it as she hauled the oversized computer box through the threshold, especially when the girl at the desk didn't even turn around to acknowledge her presence. She pointed to a spot on the bed, still typing with one hand.

Thunking the box down on the cleared-off spot on the bed, Gwen rushed to shut the door. "Thanks for the help," she breathed sarcastically, still a tad out of breath from the haul and climb. Watching the changing shapes on the screens for a moment, and the girl's eyes flying back and forth between the monitors, she rested her hands on her hips. "How goes it?"

There were a few crumbs left on an oil-stained napkin next to the mouse, and a crushed-up, empty juice box on the floor. At least the girl had eaten something.

It took her a minute or two, but Violet finally acknowledged Gwen's presence, when the door opened and Jack brought in the second box. "Can't find a path through the Void," she muttered absently. "But I figured out why I could never get that other TARDIS to travel in time properly, I've also figured out why the Doctor dumped me here and now—besides having a friend here. Something strange is happening with the Rift. Every time the cracks jump to other places in space, it changes the nature of the connection with the Void. He sent me here specifically so I wouldn't try this. Jerk."

"Great, we'll have more unwanted stuff washing through," Jack grumbled, setting the box down on the carpet at the foot of the bed. "So is this, or is this not going to work?"

Turning around, the girl shrugged. "Dunno. Guess I'll find out when I get in there."

Jack folded his arms over his chest. "You know, I'd like just a little more confidence that we aren't going to be exploded or trapped once we get in there."

Violet walked over to the box on the floor, tearing the tape off. "And by 'we' you mean 'me.' I'm the only one going." Not even caring to see his reaction, she began pulling paper away from the device. Ok, it DID look like a cosmic cappuccino machine. She'd spot him that one. "Oooh, nice work on the miniature dampeners. No wonder you fit it into only two boxes."

Jack pulled the paper out of her hands, tossing it back on the box contents. "I'm offering to help you."

She could see that he was angry, despite his even tone. It was tough to be sure if this was because she was throwing his kindness back in his face, or if he was afraid he wouldn't get his answers, once she left. Especially if this trip ended up being one-way. "Look, you're going to get your answers. I just can't give them to you. Laws of time and space and all that." Hopefully this wouldn't require going into any further details. It was a hope she had—probably wouldn't pan out though.

His voice was very tight and controlled when he spoke. "Why not?" Oh yes. He was very, very angry with her. "I'm helping you. We are helping you--"

Violet sighed, rubbing her temples. Stupid three dimensional beings. "Because you already have your answers. At least to me. That's my past. Well, technically not my past, I was in another universe when it happened…never mind. Look. It's your future. This Doctor's past. That's all I can say." She wasn't sure how much more she could give up without doing the whole paradoxical time warp (which sadly didn't involve anyone dressing in drag or throwing anything at movie screens).

The Doctor had said something to her, when she'd asked if he was coming to see Greg off. He said he couldn't run into himself, or WORSE, anyone he knew. Which meant, there was business he had already completed here… in his past, but this timeline's future. And if she gave away anything too soon…she'd change that encounter that Jack apparently had (would have?) with the Doctor.

He let her pull the paper out of his hand. She tossed it behind her, like a kid at Christmas. "I know it stinks on ice. But at least you know you are going to get your answers, right?"

Standing, Jack rubbed the back of his neck. "So what the hell am I supposed to do till then?"

Gwen gently grabbed his arm, trying to console him. "You're going to get your answer, Jack. Isn't that enough?"

Frowning, he tried not to let his disappointment show. "It's time travel. I could get my answers tomorrow, I could get them a hundred years from now."

Violet felt bad. No wonder all of her readings in the Doctor's old school texts about how a Time Lord was to behave in the universe always talked about dispassionate interest and impartiality. If you let your emotions get into it… imagine all the mucking about you could do. "Help me get this out of the box." She tried to find some place to get some leverage on it, but couldn't find anything.

Sighing, Jack pulled out a pocketknife, tearing through the sides of the box, revealing half the device. "Lets just get this over-with, then." When he started cutting open the second box, he turned to Gwen, who was watching with arms crossed over her chest. "Can you see what's taking Tosh so long with the generators? I'd like to get this over with before Christmas."

The woman wasn't pleased, but she left without another word.

The door closed, and the room's two occupants worked in silence for a few minutes, bent over the soldered copper connectors, trying to hard wire the two parts of the device together.

Dragging cables from the server to the spout-y looking power adapter, Violet began connecting it to the computer that would drive the computations needed to make the controlled hole that she needed in the rift. "So…you knew Rose Tyler?"

Jack froze for a second, then continued with his setup. "Maybe."

Getting everything secure, Violet stood up and dug around for the keyboard, trying to see if everything was compatible, functional, and talking to each other. "Unless the Doctor has a fetish for people with the name 'Rose,' I think you did."

Punching a few buttons on his wrist computer, Jack refused to look her in the eye. "I don't know, does he have a fetish for people named after flowers in general?"

Violet looked away, turning back to her monitors. "I just… wanted to know what she was like. Back then."

Jack relaxed a bit, his hand resting on top of the monstrous and bulky device that was now taking up the foot of the bed and the floor in front of it. It wasn't the kid's fault. "Look…she was a good girl. Funny, gorgeous. Made a hell of a peanut brittle, if you can believe it. Too brave for her own good, and I'm betting it got her killed. If I know her, she was at Canary Wharf when that whole thing went down—right in the middle of it, and that's something else the Doctor's going to have to answer for."

Putting the keyboard down, Violet wandered the empty space in the room, thinking. She couldn't be governed by her emotions—sometimes hard decisions had to be made for the sake of the universe…

Closing her eyes, she rested a hand on his. "You understand…I never told you this. In fact—you don't know me. We're talking…Void monsters coming to clean up the mess and the whole bit—universe damaging stuff. What the hell am I saying? You're a Time Agent. You know how dangerous it is to muck with timelines, especially if you know what's supposed to happen next. I can't tell you any more about the Bad Wolf, or what's happened to you. The Doctor has to do that. I shouldn't even be giving you this much, but… Well, I may have failed my final examination already, so what's a little bit of a paradox between friends?"

She looked up at Jack, trying to convey just how serious she was about the potential for a paradox. "She's still alive. And I don't mean it in a…retarded Time Lord 'every moment is now' kind of way. She's alive in your timeline. She's alive in mine." Violet looked away. "I didn't tell you that, ok?"

His hand turned and he closed it over her small one. "Didn't tell me what?"

Violet was about to repeat herself, but she saw the grin spread across his face, and she pulled her hand away. "That's not nice. But exactly what I'm talking about."

Jack slapped her good arm. "God, you're so gullible. I used to do stuff like that all the time to--" he blinked and looked away. "Lemme guess, don't ask, because you can't tell?"

Sighing, Violet sat back down at the monitors. "Pretty much. You absolutely cannot tell the Doctor--"

Rolling his eyes, Jack leaned against the wall, hands in his pockets. "I'm hardly a time-travel virgin. I'm not going to tell him anything."

XYZ

"Put her on."

Oh no. Rose had to look back, when she heard that. She caught a glimpse of the Doctor's face twisting when he heard the way this phone conversation was going. Violet was up to something, which was very frightening. They should have known, but… ugh. Who the hell was she kidding? Violet was genetically incapable of staying out of trouble.

The man turned away from them ever so slightly, his compatriot still standing behind the Doctor. "I don't have time to wait for these…antics. Let me rephrase this. Her mother does not have time to wait."

Before Rose knew what happened, the man's hand was wrapped around her hair, the rough worn parts of the glove catching and pulling on the strands he'd ripped his fingers through. He yanked her head suddenly, smashing it off of the high back of the chair causing the world to go a violent blue-black for just a second.

An involuntary gasp escaped her. She hadn't meant to give them even that much satisfaction, but she really hadn't expected it. "Violet, whatever you're thinking of doing—DON'T!"

It earned her another sharp tug that caused her to see stars again.

The second the world came back into semi-focus from the darkness (that slight shade of difference between seeing double, versus seeing nothing), she caught a glimpse of the Doctor nodding. Without thinking, she tore her left hand free of the cuffs, pulling her wrist through the constricted bungee cord and pushed the man away.

The Doctor was a bit better off, both of his hands came free, and he was able to grab hold of the man behind him, hauling him over the high back of the chair.

Rose had been pulling her other arm free, dragging the cuffs behind her, when she heard the Doctor scream out in pain. The man landed on the ground at the Doctor's feet, revealing a small metal handle, like a dentists' instrument, protruding from the Doctor's shoulder, just below the collarbone.

She began tearing her legs free of the elastic cord, digging for the pins on the shackles around her ankles just as the man with the phone grabbed her by the bloody collar of her blouse, yanking her back into the chair. Without thinking, her elbow caught him under the jaw and her other hand found his shirt and she pulled him down to the ground.

The mobile phone hit the ground, crushing beneath the weight of the man, and when he rolled off, she could see that it was in pieces. Rose went through more phones that way...

Finally pulling the pins free, she got to her feet and free of the miles of rope wrapped around her only to find the Doctor's assailant pointing a gun at her from his position on the floor. She froze.

The Doctor managed to pull the thin, sharp implement from his flesh. He shifted his weight forward. A second later everything erupted—a thousand things happening in the bat of an eye. "Go!" he shouted, plunging it into the gunman's arm in a reciprocal fashion.

Rose didn't think—the second he shouted to go, she turned and threw herself around the corner of the TARDIS, feeling a sharp pain just before she hit the ground. Scrambling on hands and knees toward the front, she almost slipped on something she vaguely recognized as blood—her own, apparently.

Damning her height, or lack there-of, she jumped up, reaching for the spare key behind the lit sign on the box—hopefully the ship still recognized her and would let her have it. She'd never known it to give the key to anyone other than the Doctor, but the TARDIS was a clever thing.

Hand wrapping around something cold and metal, she hit the ground and fell against the door, breathing hard. Shoving the key into the lock, she realized it was very slick and coated red, the same as her hand. She almost couldn't turn it, but the door swung inward just as footsteps rushed around the ship, and she felt the man's hands pound on the door the moment it clicked closed behind her.

Leaning against the door, she pressed a palm to the wound--to the area that was on fire. Upset with herself that she wasn't even able to help the Doctor, Rose slid down the door then looked up at the green glowing control console. "Well," she breathed. "I'm open to suggestions."

XYZ

Two dark-haired women were carrying large hexagonal-shaped boxes down the hall and were only a few feet from his room. Greg could only guess they were the power generators, but he didn't have time to confirm. Phone in hand, he rushed between them, muttering his apologies. Barging into his own room, he stopped at the edge of the clutter of equipment taking over his desk, bed and floor space. "Something's happened," he managed to get out as he struggled for breath.

Captain Jack merely looked up from the back side of the server and some extraneous wires he was stripping. Violet leapt up from her chair, and her final set of calculations. "What's going on?"

He tried to explain what he'd heard before it cut out. "I tried calling back, and got nothing. Not even a ringing or a busy tone."

Jack held up a hand the moment he saw the panic threatening to explode in the girl. "Now, this could mean anything."

Violet shook her head. "But I can't be sure. And those people still have my gran. My gran hasn't had anything to do with Torchwood or this alien business. If nothing else, I have to make sure she's safe. Plus mum said to NOT do it, which means it's my genetic obligation as her offspring to disobey—and that whatever it is—it's bad. And…" she looked at Greg, perhaps attempting to judge his reaction to her next words. "It's time to go home."

The young man just nodded. He probably wasn't going to see her again. Even if she made it through the Void, even if she survived whatever the other Torchwood had in store, this was it for them. A week ago, he'd been planning on walking off the TARDIS, never to see her or the Doctor again, and had accepted it. Today, he couldn't fathom not seeing her again. Taking one of the large boxes from the shorter of the two women, he found a spot on the other side of his bed for it, and began pulling the cardboard away. "Captain Jack's right," he said very quietly, "lets get this show on the road."

Jack had already found a spot for the other generator, tearing the packing away from the device—a smooth white metal with some sort of glowing blue regulator on the front. It was a simple matter to hook it back up. Two jumper cables and a few flipped switches later, and the whole setup was glowing like a Christmas tree with all the lights and readouts.

Violet wiped her forehead, looking it over. "Right. Let me just make sure I have all the levels as correct as I can make them—I mean, I'm leaving it up to chance. Don't need to leave it quite SO up to chance. Can someone tell me what the rotation of the wave signatures is on both generators?"

She sat down at the computer while the Asian lady (Toshiko? He couldn't ever remember) read out a series of numbers. He put both hands on her shoulders. Feeling the tension in her neck and back, he began gently rubbing the knots. "I'll miss you," he whispered as she continued typing. "I—You should let me go with you."

A few keystrokes later, one of the monitors flipped to a magenta graph, showing the power draw from both devices as the 'cosmic cappuccino machine,' as Captain Jack had dubbed it, began building enough energy to crack the rift like a walnut. The machine started humming and Violet turned around, putting a hand on his. "Are you ready for the very real chance that you'll never see your family again?" But she didn't let him answer. "I'm not ready for that for you. I—look. I'll call you, alright?"

It wasn't the answer he was looking for, but he nodded. She needed him to have faith in her right now. She didn't need his sudden and belated realization that there'd be a hollow place in his life without her. "Take care of yourself."

When she got up, Jack took her place at the computer. "I'll count you down." When she opened her mouth to ask how he planned on doing that, he grinned. "Don't worry about me—I know very little about many things. Not enough to do any good, but just enough to be dangerous."

A warm smile broke out on Violet's face. "Thank you. For everything. I'll…tell them you say hi." Plying him with another peck on the cheek, she stepped around the second generator. Taking both of Gwen's hands, the girl smiled. "Thanks for being a mother hen." Unable to resist, she put her arms around the woman. One squeeze later, and she scooted toward the equipment at the foot of the bed, holding out a hand to the other woman. "Sorry we didn't really get to meet. But you did amazing work on this thing. Period. I won't even say for a human, because that's just rude. I'd have never gotten it together in time on my own."

Greg tried to keep a neutral look on his face as she turned to Captain Jack, nodding as she turned a dial on the equipment at her feet. "I'm at fifty percent. Bumping to seventy five…" She almost seemed surprised that nothing was blowing up in her face.

An instant later, a pink arc began running from two thin antennae on either side of the device. When Violet declared ninety percent, then a hundred, a field opened up between the antennae, the color of bubble gum, green and purple tendrils of power wisping off the field. She watched it grow for a moment, then turned back to Greg. "Don't forget me," she whispered then looked to Jack for her go-ahead.

Seeing the field stabilize, Jack turned to the only screen bearing readable characters. "Dimensional rip opening in three…two…one…"

Before she could think twice about it (the second thought no doubt would have seen her talking herself out of it), she stepped through the portal that had opened. The world seemed to be on fire for a moment as the light burned her eyes, but then the brightness faded.

It all melted away, every last bit of pink and green, like fireworks on a cool autumn night, shrinking away into a thick, cloudy darkness at the end of the finale. It was thick and metallic, too—pressing in against her like the grave. The last of the light died away and she desperately searched for a pathway…

Just as she saw and felt and heard everything around her…fade to black.

The End…till next time

(in a story with an as-yet-to-be-determined clever name).


End file.
